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Recent  Colonization  in"" "Chile 


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V 


AMERICAN   GEOGRAPHICAL  SOCIETY 
RESEARCH   SERIES   NO.   6 


RECENT   COLONIZATION 
IN  CHILE 


BY 

Mark  Jefferson 


AMERICAN  GEOGRAPHICAL  SOCIETY  S  EXPEDITION 

TO  A. B.C.   COUNTRIES  IN   I918 

NO.    I 


NEW  YORK 

OXFORD  UNIVERSITY  PRESS 

AMERICAN  BRANCH:    35  West  32ND  Street 

LONDON,  TORONTO,  MELBOURNE,  AND  BOMBAY 

I  9  2  I 


55977 


COPYRIGHT,  1 92 1 

BY 

THE  AMERICAN  GEOGRAPHICAL  SOCIETY 

OF  NEW  YORK 

COPYRIGHT  IN  GREAT  BRITAIN 
PRINTED  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES  OF  AMERICA 


THE  CONDE  NAST  PRESS 
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\ 


o  rJ3 


RECENT  COLONIZATION  IN  CHILE 

Creole  Chile 
After  the  northern  deserts,  where  one  passes  browns  and 
yellows  day  after  day,  unrelieved  by  the  smallest  patch  of 
green,  the  irrigated  bottom  lands  of  central  Chile  are  a  great 
delight  to  the  eye.  Where  the  alfalfa  fields  floor  the  valley  and 
the  cattle  browse  lazily,  though  the  hills  are  brown  and  only 
spotted  over  with  scrubby  trees,  they  frame  a  pleasant  picture 
of  Chilean  homes  with  poplars  lining  the  irrigation  ditches  beside 
the  dusty  road.  Much  bright  sunshine;  house  walls  in  light 
colors  of  plaster   facade   under   the   red-tiled   roof;  occasional 

<^''  hovels  and  street  walls  of  adobe;  a  land  of  horses,  mules,  oxen, 
and  goats,  of  abundant  beef  and  potatoes,  of  wheat,  corn,  and 
barley,  of  alfalfa  and  onions,  of  watermelons  and  olives  and 
grapes  and  excellent  wines,  of  oranges,  peaches,  walnuts,  and  al- 
monds, of  houses  built  in  a  hollow  square  about  a  patio,  of 
dark-eyed  women  at  windows  barred  with  iron  grilles — this  is 
Creole  country,  this  is  Chile. 

^  It  is  a  country  held  in  large  estates,  and  seen  in  the  broad 

it  looks  empty;  for  the  landlord's  house  is  far  back  from  the 
road,  and  the  wretched  brown  hut  of  the  roto  is  hard  to  see. 
But  it  gives  the  essential  picture  of  Chilean  society,  a  society 
divided  into  two  classes — an  upper  class  that  possesses  and 
enjoys  and  a  lower  class  that  labors  and  obeys.  And,  though 
socialism  and  anarchism  are  at  work,  this  organization  shows 
little  sign  of  changing  its  nature.  The  roto  is  landless,  ignorant, 
wretched,  and  almost  without  hope.  The  peon  of  the  Argentine 
Republic  has  his  position  of  inferiority  immensely  mitigated  by  the 
mastery  of  wide  spaces  that  comes  from  owning  a  horse,  an  easy 
thing  in  a  land  where  there  are  more  horses  than  inhabitants. 
But,  though  horses  were  formerly  more  plentiful  in  Chile, '^  the 

'  Before  1870  when  General  Roca  put  down  the  Indians  of  the  Argentine  Pampa 
Argentine  cattle  and  horses  were  carried  off  for  cheap  sale  in  southern  Chile.  See 
W.  Jaime  Molins:  La  Pampa,  Buenos  Aires,  1918,  p.  7. 


■^ 


^ 


2  RECENT  COLONIZATION  IN  CHILE 

country  now  has  only  one  horse  to  eight  people,  and  the  roto  in 
search  of  work  travels  humbly  and  painfully  afoot.  On  the  other 
hand  is  the  upper  class  which  owns  land,  is  the  ruling  power,  and 
regards  even  the  lightest  manual  work  as  beneath  its  dignity. 
The  system  is  feudal  and  Creole. 

The  Chileans  as  a  Race 

The  Creoles  are  all  American-born,  of  Spanish  race,  with 
or — rarely — without  a  touch  of  Indian  blood.  Indian  blood 
indeed  is  universal  in  South  America.  He  who  claims  pure 
Spanish  descent  speaks  in  the  sense  noted  by  the  distinguished 
Argentine  scholar-president  Mitre,  who  assures  us  that  a  genera- 
tion after  the  Rio  de  la  Plata  region  was  settled  "the  sons  of 
Spaniards  and  native  women  were  regarded  as  of  pure  Spanish 
descent."  ^  Few  or  no  women  accompanied  the  Spaniards  who 
came  not  as  immigrants,  but  as  soldiers  bent  on  war  and  con- 
quest. Especially  is  this  true  of  Chile.  In  the  other  Andean 
countries  conquest  was  over  in  an  amazingly  short  period. 
At  times  a  single  battle  sufificed  to  put  the  Spaniard  in  place  of 
the  defeated  native  lord  as  ruler  and  master.  But  in  Chile  the 
Araucanian  was  still  unsubdued  at  the  end  of  three  centuries, 
during  the  greater  course  of  which  an  endless  succession  of 
Spanish  soldiers  had  streamed  towards  Chile.  "Its  possession  has 
cost  Spain  more  blood  and  treasure  than  all  the  rest  of  her  settle- 
ments in  America"  wrote  Molina  at  the  end  of  the  eighteenth 
century.^  And  still  today  the  Frontera  looms  large  in  Chile,  an 
Indian  frontier  behind  which  the  white  man  might  not  pass 
within  the  memory  of  men  not  yet  old. 

Among  the  Chilean  aristocrats  the  Indian  blood  is  ancient 
or  collateral,  from  an  Indian  princess  perhaps;  but  it  exists  in 
all  classes.  Even  the  singular  group  of  families  with  English  or 
Irish  names — the  Edwards,  Walker,  Williams,  Tupper,  Clark, 
Holly,  Miller,  Thompson,  Lynch,  O'Higgins,  O'Brien,  Cochrane, 

2  Bartholome  Mitre:  Historia  de  Belgrano  y  de  la  independencia  argentina, 
4th  edit.,  2  vols.,  Buenos  Aires,  1887;  reference  in  Vol.  i,  p.  10. 

'  Giovanni  Ignazio  Molina:  Saggio  suUa  storia  naturale  del  Chili,  2  vols.,  Bologna, 
1782,  1787;  reference  in  Vol.  2,  p.  264. 


Fig.  2 — Patio  of  Creole  house.  It  is  an  open  courtyard  on  which  the  house  rooms 
open.  Though  it  is  winter,  the  weather  is  mild,  the  front  door  is  open,  and  we  are 
looking  through  the  wide  entrance  hall. 

Patios  of  the  houses  of  the  rich  have  beautiful  plants  and  shrubs. 


Fig.  3 — A  sunny  garden  gate  in  town.  The  gardens  are  very  attractive  but  diffi- 
cult to  see  unless  you  liave  the  freedom  of  the  house.  The  city  streets  are  of  unin- 
terrupted walls.  Though  it  is  winter  there  is  the  typical  Creole  sunshine  between 
the  Eucalyptus  trunks.   This  is  old  Chile. 


THE  CHILEANS  AS  A  RACE  3 

and  Mackenna  families — that  are  so  prominent  in  the  Chilean 
Four  Hundred  have  Indian  blood  by  their  marriages  with 
Creole  families.  A  Chilean  physician,  Nicolas  Palacios,  has 
written  a  two-volume  work  on  the  Chilean  race  ^  and  pronounces 
strongly  on  this  subject.  He  gathered  abundant  evidence  from 
the  old  chroniclers,  which  an  American  writer  cleverly  con- 
denses as  follows:  "the  Chilean  masses  are  descended  from  the 
crossing  of  Europeans  with  captive  native  women.  Early  Chile 
was  a  man's  colony,  and  white  women  were  few.  The  Spanish 
trooper  fared  south  to  the  frontier  with  from  four  to  six  native 
women  to  attend  him.  Four  to  one  was  the  ratio  of  the  sexes  in 
the  frontier  garrisons,  and  soon  there  was  a  swarm  of  half-breed 
children.  In  a  single  week  in  1580  sixty  such  children  were  born 
in  a  post  with  one  hundred  and  sixty  soldiers.  In  1550  the  mar- 
ried men  in  Valdivia  had  up  to  thirty  concubines  apiece.  Aguirre, 
one  of  the  conqiiistadores,  left  at  his  death  fifty  legitimate  sons, 
to  say  nothing  of  daughters.  De  Escobar  had  eighty-seven 
living  descendants,  and  he  by  no  means  held  the  record  for  his 
time.  It  is  doubtful  if  the  exploits  in  parentage  of  the  Chilean 
pioneers  can  be  matched  in  history.  The  men  of  two  of  the  most 
bellicose  breeds  the  world  has  ever  known  wore  each  other  down 
by  endless  warfare,  so  that  innumerable  native  women  became 
the  booty  of  the  surviving  white  men  and  bore  them  children. 
As  late  as  1776  in  Santiago  the  women  were  ten  times  as  numer- 
ous as  the  men.  This  blending  of  strains  occurred  so  long  ago 
and  was  so  complete  that  the  modern  Chileans  do  not  reveal 
the  atavism  of  mixed  breeds,  They  are  virtually  a  new  race 
with  definite,  transmissible  characteristics,  and  betray,  it  is 
said,  no  tendency  to  revert  to  either  of  the  ancestral  stocks." 
Palacios  *  likes  to  refer  to  the  European  ancestors  of  the  Chileans 
as  Goths  rather  than  Latins,  believing  that  at  the  time  of  the 
Conquest  the  Spanish  kingdoms  were  poorly  knit  into  a  nation 
and  that  Latin  meant  nothing  racial  but  only  a  language  and 
a  civilization  powerful  enough  to  impose  its  language  on  the 

*  Nicolas  Palacios:  Raza  Chilena,  2nd  edit.,  2  vols.,  Santiago,  1918. 
=■  Ibid.,  Vol.  I.  pp.  45-56. 


4  RECENT  COLONIZATION  IN  CHILE 

whole  peninsula.  A  later  Chilean  writer,  Luis  Thayer  Ojeda/' 
maintains  that  the  Spaniards  of  the  Conquest  had  become  firmly 
welded  into  one  race  and  that  the  Araucanians  did  not  enter 
into  the  composition  of  the  Chilean  race  so  much  as  did  the 
Mapuches.   He  seems  to  be  right. 


The  Feudalism  of  Creole  Society 

The  artistocratic  Creole  society  has  dominated  in  all  Latin 
America.  The  lower  class  may  occupy  a  little  land,  but  in  general 
it  is  only  by  permission  of  the  patronJ  Whether  peon,  roto, 
or  giiaso,  he  has  more  Indian  blood  than  his  master.  In  Peru 
and  Bolivia  h^  is  purely  Indian.  His  function  is  to  labor  for  a 
patron.  The  Argentine  law  required  him  to  carry  a  book  of 
Conchavo,  in  which  was  stated  and  attested  by  whom  he  was 
employed,  for  how  long,  and  at  what  wages.  Without  it  he  might 
be  put  to  work  on  public  tasks. 

In  Chile  the  peasant  is  an  inquilino,  which  might  be  rendered 
"tenant,"  but  "serf"  would  be  more  accurate.  He  has  a  pretense 
at  wage,  the  use  of  an  acre  or  two  of  land,  a  wretched  hut  of 
unbaked  bricks  with  roof  of  thatch,  the  privilege  of  using  some 
animals  from  the  farm,  and  fairly  feudal  obligations  to  serve  all 
the  needs  of  his  master's  house,  he  and  his  family  too.  In  re- 
turn the  inquilino  does  what  work  the  patron  asks  of  him.  He 
toils  hard  and  lives  miserably,  but  life  is  assured  him  and  his 
invariably  large  family.  Under  the  Creole  system  he  may 
always  count  on  a  good  deal  of  advice,  on  care  in  sickness,  when 
medicine  and  personal  attention  will  be  provided,  and  on  help 
and  protection  in  special  adversity.  The  patron  does  not  mind 
how  wretched  the  state  in  which  his  inquilino  lives  but  would 
be  ashamed  to  let  him  starve.  I  am  not  sure  that  this  obligation 
of  the  patron  is  made  as  much  of  in  Chile  as  in  other  Creole 

^  Luis  Thayer  Ojeda:  Elementos  etnicos  que  han  intervenido  en  la  poblaci6n 
de  Chile,  Santiago,  1919,  p.  131. 

'  On  Indian  landownership  in  Bolivia  see  George  McCutchen  McBridc:  The 
Agrarian  Indian  Communities  of  Highland  Bolivia,  Amer.Geogr.Soc.  Research  Ser., 
No.  5.  1921. 


THE  FEUDALISM  OF  CREOLE  SOCIETY  5 

society.  In  the  Argentine  thirty  years  ago  the  master's  obligation 
was  pronounced. 

The  inquilinos  do  not  suffice  to  gather  the  harvest.  There  is 
always  lack  of  hands  for  that.  So  the  landlords  have  always 
clamored  for  help,  but  only  for  two  months  in  the  year.  Sons 
of  the  inquilinos  may  drift  to  the  city,  where  good  fortune  may 
find  them  some  work;  but  there  are  few  factories,  and  there  is 
little  need  for  hands.  Many  go  to  the  Argentine,  both  to  the 
southern  region  and  near  Mendoza.  The  lot  of  the  landless  Chil- 
ean is  very  hard.  He  cannot  find  work  in  a  country  that  has 
always  encouraged  and  aided  immigration.  Before  the  war 
common  labor  brought  30  or  40  cents  (United  States)  a  day.  In 
1918  in  Valdivia  it  was  worth  from  60  cents  to  a  dollar  and  a  half. 
And  the  Chilean  roto  is  a  splendid  worker. 

Such  is  the  essentially  feudal  character  of  Creole  society. 
It  is  difficult  for  Americans  to  realize  the  difference  between 
the  laboring  classes  of  South  America  and  those  of  our  own 
country.  Up  to  recent  days  the  masses  in  the  United  States  have 
been  Europeans,  transformed  in  the  New  World  by  the  posses- 
sion of  the  soil  they  till  instead  of  tilling  it  for  others,  as  their 
forefathers  have  done;  transformed  into  men  of  widespread 
capacity  for  action.  Our  people  have  no  Indian  blood,  and  we 
have  no  peasant,  or  landless,  class.  For  land  through  a  long  period 
was  as  easily  accessible  in  the  United  States  to  the  poor  man  as 
to  the  rich.  Ferrero^  found  European  culture  repeated  in  the 
mentality  of  the  South  American,  but  in  the  United  States  he 
seemed  to  discover  a  new  world.  Naturally  the  more  gifted  of  the 
South  Americans  think  themselves  chosen  to  lead  the  masses, 
and  love  to  practice  this  leadership.  Often,  indeed,  they  do  excel 
in  guidance  of  their  people;  but  they  fail  in  accomplishment  very 
often  most  unhappily  because  the  people  they  have  to  guide  are 
of  so  little  resourcefulness.  It  is  impossible  for  the  dominant  class 
of  Creole  society  to  think  highly  of  the  class  whose  status  they 
constantly,  but  unconsciously,  depress.  No  color  line  is  drawn  in 
South  America,  although  I  fancy  the  South  American  really  ex- 

'Guglielmo  Ferrero:  Puritanism,  AUanlic  Monthly,  Vol.  io6,  igio,  pp.  i-6. 


6  RECENT  COLONIZATION  IN  CHILE 

dudes  his  Indian  fellow  citizen  from  his  conception  of  nationality 
as  completely  as  we  exclude  the  negro  from  our  conception  of  the 
ideal  American. 

South  Americans  are  more  European  than  we.  I  am  sure 
Ferrero  is  right,  not  merely  as  to  social  stratification  but  as  to 
their  tastes  and  feelings.  An  admitted  upper  class  assumes  the 
great  responsibility  and  the  great  privileges  of  the  national  life, 
and  although  this  upper  class  often  has  something  of  Indian 
blood  its  culture  is  highly  European.  Such  are  the  fruits  of 
Spanish  conquest;  such  are  the  South  Americans  up  to  the  mid- 
dle of  the  nineteenth  century. 

It  is  because  of  these  conditions  that  the  wide  adoption  of  the 
constitution  of  the  United  States  in  the  South  American  republics 
is  so  formal  and  of  so  little  effect.  Feudalism  mixes  badly  with 
the  rights  of  man.  The  peasant  of  Creole  society  accepts  his 
inferiority.  And,  though  the  system  is  not  inflexible  and  a  man  of 
ability  may  pass  into  the  upper  class,  to  do  so  is  not  easy  nor  is  it 
of  frequent  occurrence.  It  is  all  in  absolute  contrast  with  develop- 
ment in  the  United  States,  where  none  of  the  native-born  have 
any  sense  of  inferiority,  except  of  a  temporary  character,  and 
the  passage  of  individuals  into  higher  social  strata  is  quite  a 
matter  of  course. 

Colonization  in  Southern  South  America 

But  for  more  than  fifty  years  now  colonization  by  European 
families  has  been  going  on  in  that  part  of  South  America  that 
lies  in  the  temperate  zone.  Families  of  Italians,  Portuguese, 
Spaniards,  and  Germans  from  the  landless  classes  of  Europe 
have  been  getting  little  properties  on  South  American  soil  that 
they  till  with  European  hands.  They  are  initiating  New  World 
changes  in  feudal  South  America. 

Of  course  not  all  immigrant  peasants  get  possession  of  land. 
The  ragged  Portuguese  porter  in  the  streets  of  Rio,  the  barefoot 
German  peon  who  works  beside  a  negro  loading  trucks  in  the 
streets  of  Porto  Alegre,  Brazil,  or  shovels  dirt  beside  a  better 
dressed  Indian  in  Temuco,  Chile,  the  Basque  or  Italian  who  does 


Fig.  4 — Upper  Class  Chilean.    A  t>pe  not  infrequent  in  Santiago. 


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COLONIES  IN  SOUTHERN  SOUTH  AMERICA        7 

heavy  work  in  the  streets  of  Buenos  Aires,  is  merely  a  better 
worker,  more  frugal  and  steadier  than  the  Indian  peon  or  roto. 
The  upper  class  Creole  regards  all  these,  just  as  he  regards  the 
peon  and  the  rolo,  as  a  class  apart,  born  to  do  his  work  and  to 
accept  his  control.  They  are  usually  as  ignorant  as  the  Indians, 
from  whom  they  are  distinguished  by  steadier  habits  of  labor,  by 
less  drunkenness,  but  especially  by  a  more  eager  desire  to  save 
money  in  order  to  buy  land.  As  soon  as  the  immigrant  acquires 
land  his  children  go  to  school.  In  these  children  is  being  born  a 
new  race  of  South  Americans,  whose  development  is  going  to 
parallel  our  own.   In  them  South  America  is  being  colonized. 

The  American  Geographical  Society's  Expedition 

To  visit  these  people  and  study  their  colonization  where  it  is 
furthest  advanced,  that  is  in  southern  Brazil  and  Argentina,  was 
the  object  of  the  American  Geographical  Society's  Expedition 
to  South  American  Colonies  in  1918. 

As  the  continent  is  reached  most  quickly  now  by  the  West 
Coast  route,  it  was  proposed  to  make  also  such  an  examination 
of  the  German  settlements  in  southern  Chile  as  the  on-coming 
rainy  season  might  allow  before  crossing  the  Andes.  Leaving 
New  York  April  2,  1918,  we  reached  Valparaiso  April  21,  passing 
from  there  to  Santiago  and  down  the  whole  length  of  the  great 
interior  valley  to  Temuco,  Valdivia,  and  Puerto  Montt.  There 
the  valley  plunges  under  sea,  and  the  Chilean  archipelago  begins. 

We  knew  that  much  of  Chile  was  semiarid  and  treeless,  like 
the  Argentine  Republic.  I  had  seen  a  little  of  it  in  1886  and  had 
lived  in  the  Argentine.  The  value  of  water  for  irrigation,  the  scar- 
city of  lumber  and  even  of  firewood,  the  splendor,  of  the  sunlight, 
and  the  tonic  of  the  air  were  therefore  familiar  things.  On  the 
other  hand,  it  was  from  the  charm  of  woodland  scenes  in  New 
England  and  the  Middle  West  that  we  had  drawn  pleasant 
anticipations  of  the  German  settlements  in  southern  Chile's 
woodlands.  A  further  impression,  gained  from  our  reading,  was 
that  the  region  was  thoroughly  Germanized.  It  is  a  widespread 
notion.    As  a  sufificient  example  a  recent  passage  will  serve: 


8       RECENT  COLONIZATION  IN  CHILE 

"The  temperate  portions  of  southern  Brazil  and  Chile  are  dotted 
with  German  villages,  in  which  the  majority  of  the  people  are 
Germans  and  the  German  language  is  spoken."  ^  Puerto  Montt, 
one  man  assured  us,  was  wholly  German,  a  hotbed  of  German 
intrigue. 

The  Germanization  of  Southern  Chile  a  Myth 

It  was  with  some  astonishment,  therefore,  that,  as  we  pene- 
trated into  the  parts  of  Chile  regarded  as  German,  we  saw  only 
a  few  Germans  among  considerable  numbers  of  Chileans.  On 
the  streets,  in  the  shops,  and  at  railway  stations  the  Germans 
became  more  in  evidence  as  we  went  farther  south;  but  always 
there  were  more  Chileans  than  Germans,  generally  ten  or  twenty 
times  as  many. /in  central  Chile,  north  of  Concepcion,  the  oc- 
casional Germans'  belonged  to  the  upper  class,  spoke  Spanish, 
and  were  among  the  most  intelligent  looking  people  to  pe  seen. 
Most  of  the  Germans  of  the  south  were  of  a  different  type,  more 
peasant-like.  Occasionally  we  saw  a  ragged  and  barefoot  German 
working  at  some  manual  labor  alongside  a  Chilean  roto.  More 
usually  the  German  workmen  were  engaged  in  some  handicraft, 
as  carpentry  or  shoemaking;  but  they  were  always  a  minority. 

Closer  examination  and  study  confirmed  our  first  impression. 
The  Germanization  of  southern  Chile  is  simply  a  myth.  There 
is  no  town  or  settlement  in  the  country  where  a  majority  of  the 
people  are  of  German  origin  or  speak  German.  In  Cautin, 
Valdivia,  and  Llanquihue,  the  three  provinces  at  the  southern 
end  of  the  great  valley  where  most  of  the  "German"  settlements 
are,  the  census  of  1907  reported  a  total  population  of  363,000 
I  inhabitants.  Persons  of  German  descent  in  all  Chile  were  not 
[more  than  30,000,  of  whom  20,000  were  estimated  to  have 
kept  their  German  speech.  Many  of  these  Germans  live  in  Val- 
paraiso and  Santiago,  being  engaged  in  business  there,  and  are 
not  colonists  at  all.  For  comparison  it  is  of  interest  to  note  that 
the  same  authority  estimates  that  there  are  10,000  persons  of 
English  speech  in  the  country,  and  these  I  presume  are  almost 

N^    ^  Journ.  of  Geogr.,  Vol.  19,  1920,  p.  47. 


GERMANIZATION  OF  SOUTHERN  CHILE  9. 

all  in  business.  The  authority  is  Dr.  Carl  Martin,  long  a  resident 
of  southern  Chile,  a  patriotic  German  who  loved  the  old  Empire 
wholeheartedly.  His  book  on  Chile^"  is  far  the  best  work  on  the 
country  from  every  point  of  view.  Thayer  Ojeda  says  that  the 
population  of  German  race  numbers  40,000,  but  he  gives  no 
grounds  for  the  statement.^^ 

It  may  be  thought  that  our  impressions  in  travel  and  the  above 
figures  are  reconcilable  on  the  bases  of  the  existence  of  scattered 
small  settlements,  possibly  off  the  railroad,  in  which  Germans 
preponderate.  But  this  is  not  the  case:  the  German  settlements 
are  well  known  by  name,  and  I  have  visited  them.  Puerto  Montt, 
it  is  agreed,  is  the  most  German  of  all.  I  saw  there  the  same 
thronging  Chileans,  among  whom  were  a  few  Germans.  In  the 
proclamation  of  April,  1918,  calling  the  44  young  men  of  Puerto 
Montt  newly  of  age  to  their  military  service  in  the  district, 
there  were  no  more  than  three  German  names.  La  Alianza 
Liberal  of  May  i  announced  four  births  in  the  city,  Jose  Manuel 
Rojel,  Eeuina  (Eduina?)  Bustamante,  Olga  Almonacid,  and 
Ilda  Frida  Tolg,  of  which  names  only  the  last  can  be  German. 

Puerto  Montt  was  said  to  speak  German  and  read  German 
newspapers.  I  was  even  told  I  should  find  people  there  who  were 
bom  in  the  country  but  could  speak  no  Spanish.  All  this  is  ex- 
aggeration of  the  grossest  sort.  Of  certain  places,  like  the  Ger- 
man hotel  Heim,  such  a  statement  may  be  true;  but  apart  from 
that  I  heard  Spanish  everywhere.  Two  newspapers  in  Spanish, 
La  Alianza  Liberal  and  El  Llanquihue,  were  offered  for  sale 
everywhere,  but  I  could  not  get  any  German  paper.  The  direc- 
tory of  the  telephone  company,  Sociedad  Progreso  de  Llanquihue, 
lists  as  newspapers  {diarios),  the  two  mentioned  above  and  no 
others.  I  found  two  persons  who  spoke  no  Spanish,  but  both 
were  German-born.  No  street  in  the  city  has  a  German  name, 
nor  is  German  used  on  signs.  Even  German  business  houses 
give  their  names  in  the  Spanish  form — Casa  Carsten,  Hermanos 
Schmidt,  etc.   I  noticed  similar  absence  of  the  use  of  German  in 

'»  Carl  Martin:  Landeskunde  von  Chile,  Hamburg,  1909- 
"  Thayer  Ojeda,  p.  112. 


lo  RECENT  COLONIZATION  IN  CHILE 

other  "German"  points,  in  Valdivia,  for  instance,  and  no  towns 
have  German  names.  In  this  respect  Chile  is  quite  unHke 
southern  Brazil,  with  its  Blnmenau,  Hamburger  Berg,  etc. 

On  the  other  hand.  Dr.  Martin's  figures  include  10,000  people 
of  German  origin  who  have  lost  their  German  speech.  On  search- 
ing through  the  narratives  of  German  settlements  one  finds  many 
a  mention  of  Chileans  who  helped  in  the  work  of  German  coloni- 
zation, but  this  mention  is  casual  and  unaccentuated.  We  are 
given  to  understand  that  it  was  the  Germans  who  did  everything. 
At  Human,  for  instance,  a  few  miles  east  of  Los  Angeles,  20 
German  families  settled  in  1859,  prospered  exceedingly,  but 
became  Chilean  of  speech,  until  in  1890  a  teacher  was  brought 
from  the  fatherland  and  a  German  school  was  set  up.  Yet  no 
Chileans  are  mentioned  at  Human  at  all.  How  did  the  children 
pick  up  their  Spanish?  From  whom?  Evidently  the  Chileans 
were  there,  although  ignored,  and  they  could  not  have  been  un- 
influential  or  insignificant  if  they  managed  to  impose  their 
language  on  the  newcomers.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  we  learn  from 
Palacios^-  that,  after  allowing  36  German  families  to  choose 
lots  at  Human,  the  authorities  distributed  80  lots  of  the  same 
size  among  Chileans. 

One  hears  much  of  the  Germans  at  Temuco,  capital  of  province 
Cautin.  I  was  even  told  it  was  a  German  town.  It  is  not  that  at 
all.  Temuco  is  a  young  and  modest  town,  but  its  low  wooden 
houses  without  the  charming  patio  of  plant  and  garden  are  un- 
speakably dreary  (Fig.  11).  It  was  founded  in  1881,  in  the  course 
of  opening  up  the  Frontera.  There  is  a  mile  of  road  just  outside 
the  town  known  as  the  German  Road.  Along  it  are  about  a  dozen 
pleasant  little  German  houses  set  back  in  attractive  gardens  of 
flowers  and  vegetables.  Most  of  the  land  immediately  around 
the  city  is  in  German  hands,  but  of  the  province  they  own  but  two 
per  cent.  The  Germans  of  the  city  numbered  500  in  a  population 
of  16,000.  The  mayor  was  an  Englishman  of  charming  manners, 
who  spoke  German  and  Spanish  as  well  as  English  and  was  re- 
puted to  be  strongly  pro-German!   I  get  the  number  of  Germans 

12  Palacios,  Vol.  2,  p.  235. 


GERMANIZATION  OF  SOUTHERN  CHILE         ii 

from  Dr.  Martin,  who  took  the  trouble  to  estimate  the  number  of 
Germans  or  German  families  in  each  of  the  so-called  German 
settlements,  with  very  astonishing  results.  Of  Lautaro's  3,139 
inhabitants,  70  are  Swiss  and  German;  Collipulli  has  20  Germans 
in  2,806  persons;  Ercilla  160  in  1,450;  Victoria  410  in  10,002; 
Quillen  170  in  1,191;  Nueva  Imperial  80  in  2,537;  ^^d  Carahue 
and  Bajo  Imperial  between  them  have  70  in  a  total  of  3,036. 
Dr.  Martin  distinctly  states  that  Germans  are  always  minorities. 
Of  Puerto  Montt  he  says  (p.  728),  "the  Germans,  even  if  we  count 
with  them  the  few  French,  English,  and  Scandinavians  who  have 
come  in  with  them,  hardly  form  a  sixth  part  of  the  population." 
There  are  many  in  Valdivia,  but  he  does  not  give  the  number. 
ff^hey  must  be  a  minority,  however,  for  there  were  enough  I 
Chtleans  in  the  city  of  Valdivia  at  the  last  elections  (1917)  to  y 
oust  all  but  one  of  the  German  city  councillors  because  of  arro-  | 
gant  talk  about  the  wafTIOf  the  rural  properties  in  Valdivia 
province  that  were  worth  over  $2,000  "Chilean"  in  1907,  64  per 
cent  were  in  the  hands  of  descendants  of  Spaniards,  25  per  cent 
in  the  hands  of  people  of  German  descent.^* 

The  Chilean  Germans  are  always  surrounded  by  an  over- 
whelming majority  of  Chileans.  In  the  south  these  consist  of 
Chileans  of  the  lower  class,  except  for  a  certain  proportion  of 
officials  and  army  officers.  The  upper  class  Creole  Chilean  hardly 
counts  the  rainy  south  as  part  of  Chile  and  would  not  care  to 
live  there.  The  Germans,  too,  admit  that  their  colonies  were 
long  cut  off  from  the  great  vital  centers  (Lebenscentren)  of  the 
land.  A  good  many  of  the  German  immigrants  and  their  children 
have  moved  into  what  we  may  call  Chile  proper,  or  Creole  Chile. 
The  Llanquihue  lands  proved  so  small  for  the  large  German 
families  that  between  1900  and  1910  an  emigration  of  colonists' 
sons  had  begun  to  provinces  farther  north  and  to  the  Argentine." 
Those  who  persevered  and  stayed  on  the  land  have  won  a  valuable 
property  at  the  cost  of  most  strenuous  labor.  They  have  a  po- 
sition immeasurably  above  their  status  as  peasants  in  Germany 

"  Thayer  Ojeda,  p.  146. 

"  Deutsche  Arbeit  in  Chile:   Festschrift  des  deutschen  wissenschaftHchen   Ver- 
eins  zu  Santiago,  2  vols.,  Santiago,  1910,  191S;  reference  in  Vol.  i,  p.  54' 


12  RECENT  COLONIZATION  IN  CHILE 

but  far  below  the  condition  of  Germans  who  came  to  the  United 
States  at  the  same  time.  Most  of  those  who  have  gone  into 
Creole  Chile  have  fared  better,  being  for  the  most  part  skilled 
workers  in  a  land  that  lacks  craftsmen.  But  they  have  not 
usually  become  landowners,  for  land  is  not  available  there. 
They  have  not  acquired  the  same  stake  in  the  country  as  those 
who  have  land. 

The  Forested  Country  of  Southern  Chile 

From  Valparaiso  southward  the  landward  or  eastern  side  of 
the  coast  ranges  is  notably  dry,  but  from  the  Andes  that  wall 
ofif  the  eastern  view  .water  rushes  across  the  valley  flats  in  in- 
creasing abundance  as  one  goes  farther  south,  until  in  Collipulli, 
in  latitude  38°S.,  there  is  a  definite  change  from  the  landscape  of 
central  Chile.  A  deep  valley  with  rich  green  meadows  across 
the  floor,  with  slopes  of  alternate  green  fields  and  expanses  of 
well-tilled  red  soil,  with  real  woods  of  broad-leaved  trees  above — 
there  is  something  of  home  to  the  American  in  this  view  from  the 
high  railroad  bridge  over  the  Malleco;  but  it  is  the  end  of  old 
Chile,  the  Chile  of  the  sunny  stretches,  of  dusty  roads  and  old 
Creole  life.  Down  by  the  river  is  a  little  sawmill.  Here  begins 
the  rainy,  woodsy  country.  Here  the  house  is  of  wood  with  roof 
of  shingle  or  shakes  or  corrugated  iron  in  place  of  thatch  or  tile. 
The  patio  has  disappeared;  the  wooden  houses  are  not  built 
around  an  inner  court,  and  there  are  no  bars  on  the  windows. 
We  have  entered  the  Frontera,  the  northern  limit  of  the  forested 
country  of  southern  Chile. 

Off  the  middle  part  of  the  coast  of  the  Frontera  is  the  little 
island  of  Mocha.  Now  Mocha  is  a  division  point  in  the  Chilean 
climate.  Northward  from  this  point  the  cool,  northward-flowing 
Humboldt  Current  and  feeble  southerly  winds  affect  a  coast  that 
already  dry  near  Valparaiso  becomes  sterile  further  north.  At 
Mocha  winds  and  currents  from  the  west  impinge  strongly  on 
the  coast;  from  here  southward  we  are  in  the  belt  of  the  stormy  , 
westerlies,  and  the  driving  rains  and  dripping  forests  of  that 
region  are  the  result.  As  we  have  said  the  wooded  country  today 


FORESTED  COUNTRY  OF  THE  SOUTH 


13 


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r' 


i^ 


QjJajitiago 


FE.ONTERA 


VALDI^IA 


rSOUTHERN  PORTS 
I  Coneepci(Ja     - 
2Ara«o 

^^     3  Letft 
4Valdivla 

5  Oaomo 

6  TUcopfi 

7  Imperial 
S  VMlarif  a 

8  Castro 
1    "">!. 


^ff 


visibly  begins  at  CoUipulli,  in  the  central 
valley,  a  little  north  of  38°  S.  The  long 
trip  down  through  the  central  valley  to 
Puerto  Montt  is  through  an  almost  con- 
tinuous forest.  Here  and  there  are  dreary 
slashings  like  those  of  northern  Michigan, 
but  still  the  trees  are  abundant  and  tall 
fine  growths.  It  is  a  splendid  forest,  a 
delight  to  the  visitor's  eye.  "What  are 
those  handsome  trees?"  we  ask  a  resident. 
"Those  are  coihue,  the  pest  of  Chile."  They 
are  simply  giant  weeds  and  only  too  abun- 
dant. Too  heavy  and  weak  for  lumber,  too 
wet  to  burn,  they  simply  keep  out  the  sun 
and  make  a  quagmire  of  the  ground,  cum- 
bering the  earth  with  their  useless  presence. 
The  Chilean  forests  are  all  too  thinly 
sprinkled  with  useful  trees.  There  are  very 
few  conifers.  The  Chilean  pine,  Araucaria, 
grows  in  limited  groves  far  up  in  the  Cor- 
dillera. The  pinones,  seeds  from  the  cones, 
provide  the  Indians  with  an  important 
article  of  food;  they  are  even  sold  on  the 
Santiago  market,  but  the  lumber  is  rarely 
seen.  The  alerce,  another  conifer,  is  good 
and  light,  but  it  also  is  scarce.  For  a 
hundred  years  the  Indian  has  brought  out 
on  his  back  alerce  boards  from  the  diffi- 
cultly penetrable  interior.  In  Darwin's 
day  they  were  the  only  money  product 
of  Valdivia,  the  land  beyond  the  Frontera. 
The  European 
poplar,  which  is 
grown  all  over 
Chile  beside 
roads  and  fields, 


Fig.  6 — Colonial  Chile.  Heavy  woods  cover  the  Frontera 
and  the  lands  farther  south.  >  The  Chile  of  actual  occupa- 
tion was  between  Frontera  and  Valparaiso,  and  there  was 
thin  occupation  toward  La  Serena  and  the  desert  as  the 
widening  of  the  lines  of  shading  suggests.  The  immigrant 
colonies  have  been  located  in  Frontera  or  Valdivia. 


14  RECENT  COLONIZATION  IN  CHILE 

is  of  great  use  in  house  building.  In  Creole  Chile,  where  all  the 
houses  are  of  brick,  the  floors,  rafters,  etc.,  are  usually 
of  poplar.  An  admirable  Chilean  wood  for  doors  and 
windows  is  rauli,  but  it  is  too  scarce  and  dear.  Of  heavier 
woods  for  cabinet  work  there  is  no  lack ;  it  is  construction  wood 
that  is  lacking.  To  Holdich  it  seemed  "almost  incredible  that 
the  chief  source  of  supply  of  lumber  for  the  dockyards  should 
be  California."  ^'^  The  long  roof  beams  of  consul  Patillo's  fac- 
tory in  Temuco  are  of  American  white  pine,  imported  into  the 
heart  of  the  Chilean  lumber  industry.  For  fifty  years  there  has 
been  a  considerable  importation  of  Oregon  pine  for  long  light 
timbers.   Today  the  principal  import  is  of  Douglas  fir. 

Here  and  there  great  lumber  piles  beside  the  railroad  attest 
that  lumbering  is  an  important  industry  in  the  south.  Actual 
figures  are  hard  to  obtain,  for  "no  institution  in  Chile,  private  or 
governmental,  is  concerned  in  the  compilation  of  statistics  of 
lumber  production,"  but  an  estimate  for  an  average  year,  1913, 
placed  the  domestic  production  at  45  per  cent  of  the  country's 
requirements. i**  In  this  year  import  of  lumber  was  valued  at 
$1,140,000  (United  States). 

Physiographically  the  Chilean  coast  resembles  that  of  our 
Pacific  states,  British  Columbia,  and  Alaska,  in  reversed  but 
symmetrical  arrangement.  Nearest  the  equator  the  deserts  of 
northern  Chile  match  those  of  Lower  California;  the  central 
valley  of  Chile  between  the  coast  ranges  and  the  Andes  matches 
the  great  valley  of  California  between  the  coast  ranges  and  Sierra 
Nevada;  the  wooded  valleys  of  Cautln,  Valdivia,  and  Llanquihue 
end  at  the  sea  at  the  Gulf  of  Reloncavi  just  short  of  the  island  of 
Chiloe,  just  as  the  wooded  valleys  of  western  Oregon  and  Wash- 
ington end  at  the  sea  in  Puget  Sound  just  short  of  the  island 
of  Vancouver.  Then  follow  the  Chilean  sounds  and  fiords  be- 
tween the  coastal  Andes  and  the  Chilean  archipelago,  just  like 
the  Alaskan  sounds  and  fiords  between  the  coast  mountains 

'5T.  H.  Holdich:  The  Countries  of  the  King's  Award,  London,  1904,  p.  196. 

'«  Roger  E.  Simmons:  Lumber  Markets  of  the  West  and  North  Coasts  of  South 
America,  U.  S.  Dept.  of  Commerce,  Special  Agents  Ser.  No.  iiy,  Washington,  D.  C, 
1916. 


FORESTED  COUNTRY  OF  THE  SOUTH  15 

and  the  Alaskan  archipelago.  One  might  expect  Puerto  Montt, 
situated  in  the  forest  country  on  the  Gulf  of  Reloncavi,  quite  as 
Seattle  is  on  the  wooded  shores  of  Paget  Sound,  to  show  some 
parallelism  to  the  American  city  in  its  expansion.  The  cities 
were  of  about  the  same  size  in  1875.  In  that  year  Puerto  Montt 
had  2,137  inhabitants  and  in  1916,  7,255;  whereas  Seattle  grew 
from  a  population  of  1,107  ^^  1870  to  a  population  of  237,194  in 
1910  and  of  315,652  in  1920.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  lumber  seems 
to  do  nothing  for  Puerto  Montt.  It  is  true  that  the  railway 
did  not  reach  Puerto  Montt  till  about  191 2,  while  the  Northern 
Pacific  reached  Puget  Sound  in  1883;  but  it  was  not  the  railroad 
that  developed  lumbering  in  Washington.  Nor  is  it  for  lack  of 
enterprise  and  knowledge  of  lumbering  in  Chile,  for  North 
American  lumbermen  are  active  there.  The  fact  is  simply  that 
the  Chilean  forests  are  of  very  moderate  value,  while  those  of 
Washington  are  unrivaled. 

"It  will  not  even  burn,  it  is  so  wet,"  they  say  of  the  coihiie.  In 
these  rain-drenched  forests  a  fire  is  actually  difficult  to  set. 
Darwin,  writing  from  Chiloe  in  1835,  says,  "The  whole  of  Chiloe 
took  advantage  of  this  week  of  unusually  fine  weather  to  clear 
the  ground  by  burning.  In  every  direction  volumes  of  smoke 
were  curling  upwards.  Although  the  inhabitants  were  so  assidu- 
ous in  setting  fire  to  every  part  of  the  wood,  yet  I  did  not  see 
a  single  fire  which  they  had  succeeded  in  making  extensive."  ^^ 
Twenty  years  later  when  Perez  Rosales  was  arranging  the  first 
important  settlement  of  Germans  near  Lake  Llanquihue  he  hired 
Indians  to  clear  away  the  woods  by  fire.  Of  course  the  drier  sorts 
of  lumber,  the  only  good  sorts  the  Chilean  forests  provide,  suf- 
fered fearfully  in  these  burnings.  What  resisted  fire  and  remained 
abundant  were  the  wet,  less  usable  materials.  The  Llanquihue 
burnings  did  clear  off  a  good  deal  of  ground,  but  a  narrow  escape 
of  the  leader  of  the  party  illustrates  the  singular  wetness  of  the 
woods.  It  happened  at  one  moment  that  this  Indian  found  him- 
self surrounded  by  the  fires  that  had  been  set,  but  by  digging  a 

"Charles  Darwin:  A  Naturalist's  Voyage  Round  the  World,  London,  1886, 
p.  296. 


i6  RECENT  COLONIZATION  IN  CHILE 

hole  in  the  wet  ground  under  a  big  tree  he  escaped  unharmed.'* 
In  their  wetness  the  Chilean  woods  are  quite  unlike  our  forests. 
"In  winter  the  climate  is  detestable,  and  in  summer  it  is  only  a 
little  better.  I  should  think  there  are  few  parts  of  the  world, 
within  the  temperate  regions,  where  so  much  rain  falls — the 
sky  [is]  almost  always  clouded;  to  have  a  week  of  fine  weather 
is  something  wonderful.  It  is  even  difficult  to  get  a  single  glimpse 
of  the  Cordillera:  during  our  first  visit  once  only  the  volcano  of 
Osomo  stood  out  in  bold  relief  .  .  .  The  forests  are  so  impenetra- 
ble that  the  land  is  nowhere  cultivated  except  near  the  coast  and 
on  the  adjoining  islets.  Even  where  paths  exist,  they  are  scarcely 
passable  from  the  soft  and  swampy  state  of  the  soil  .  .  .  In  .  .  . 
shaded  paths  it  is  absolutely  necessary  that  the  whole  road  should 
be  made  of  logs  of  wood,  which  are  squared  and  placed  by  the 
side  of  each  other.  From  the  rays  of  the  sun  never  penetrating 
the  evergreen  foliage  the  ground  is  so  damp  and  soft  that, 
except  by  this  means,  neither  man  nor  horse  would  be  able  to 
pass  along. "1' 

In  the  southern  provinces  settlements  are  completely  isolated 
during  the  rainy  season.  There  is  only  one  piece  of  good  road  in 
all  southern  Chile,  the  12  miles  from  Puerto  Montt  to  Puerto 
Varas,  which  cost  the  government  $40,000.  In  the  forest,  plank 
road  is  the  only  expedient  for  the  worst  stretches.  In  low  places 
the  planks  quickly  look  as  if  they  had  been  blown  up  by  a  mine. 
At  Valdivia  the  plank  road  is  in  excellent  condition  for  three 
miles  out  of  the  city.  Then  it  gives  place  to  mud,  and  only  a 
horse  or  an  ox  team  would  take  you  further.  How  travel  is 
affected  by  the  coming  on  of  the  rains  may  be  judged  by  the  fact 
that  in  winter  no  through  ticket  can  be  bought  from  Santiago 
to  points  south  of  Valdivia.  While  wood  is  the  main  material  for 
building,  it  is  gradually  being  replaced  in  the  more  pretentious 
buildings  at  Puerto  Montt  and  Valdivia  by  corrugated  iron,  as 
alone  able  to  withstand  the  violence  of  the  rain  for  any  length 
of  time. 

"Vicente   Perez   Resales:    Recuerdos   del    Pasado    (1814-1860),    Biblioteca   de 
escritores  de  Chile,  Vol.  3,  Barcelona,  1910,  p.  407. 
'»  Darwin,  pp.  273,  274. 


BEGINNINGS  OF  FOREIGN  COLONIZATION       17 

Of  the  south  of  Chile  generally  one  may  say  what  Darwin  said 
of  near-by  Chiloe,  "If  we  could  forget  the  gloom  and  ceaseless  rain 
of  winter,  Chiloe  might  pass  for  a  charming  island."  ^^  Of  the 
character  of  the  winter  rains  we  had  some  experience — for  we 
reached  Temuco  as  the  rainy  season  was  coming  on,  A  steady 
downpour  fell  all  day  and  most  of  the  night.  We  were  glad  of  the 
corrugated  iron  roof,  glad  of  the  solid  foundations  and  walls  to 
withstand  the  brown  floods  racing  down  the  street.  How  to 
cross  the  streets  was  a  problem.  Fortunately  the  walks  were 
high  above  the  roadway,  but  that  did  not  help  when  one  came 
to  a  corner.  Beyond  the  little  paved  district  of  the  center  of  the 
city  one  was  dependent  on  planks  laid  across  the  mud  at  each 
street  corner.  At  one  of  these  corners  we  had  a  charming  illus- 
tration of  Chilean  manners.  An  immaculate  Chilean  officer  met 
us  in  the  middle  of  the  street  and  stepped  unhesitatingly  and 
smilingly  into  the  deep  mud  with  his  beautifully  polished  boots 
to  make  room  for  two  civilians.  Prussian  officers  may  have 
instructed  him  in  warfare,  but  not  in  manners. 

Elsewhere  I  have  called  80  or  more  inches  of  rain  excessive. 
Southern  Chile  has  certainly  excessive  rain.  The  Indian  becomes 
accustomed  to  it.  He  lies  out  in  a  heavy  rain  all  night  un- 
protected and  reports  feeling  well  in  the  morning.  The  white  man 
finds  so  much  water  a  great  affliction. 


Beginnings  of  Foreign  Colonization  in  Chile 

At  the  date  of  Chilean  independence  the  Araucanian  Indians 
were  undisputed  masters  of  the  Frontera.  The  country  beyond, 
on  the  mainland,  was  Valdivia.  In  1861  the  part  south  of  the 
Rio  Bueno  (40°  15'  S.)  was  set  off  as  Llanquihue. 

We  get  a  tolerable  idea  of  the  state  of  the  region  at  the  time 
from  Darwin's  narrative  of  1835.^1  It  consisted  of  great  expanses 
of  impassable  forest  in  which  were  scattered  occasional  grassy, 
open  plains  with  more  fertile  soil,  much  as  the  oak  openings 

'0  Darwin,  p.  297. 
21  Ibid.,  pp.  297-299. 


i8  RECENT  COLONIZATION  IN  CHILE 

were  scattered  through  the  woods  of  southern  Michigan.^-  "The 
Llanos  are  the  most  fertile  and  thickly  peopled  parts  of  the 
country,  as  they  possess  the  immense  advantage  of  being  nearly 
free  from  trees.  .  ,  .  I  have  often  noticed  with  surprise,  in  wooded 
undulatory  districts,  that  the  quite  level  parts  have  been  desti- 
tute of  trees."  The  few  inhabitants  were  Chilianized  Indians. 
"The  town  [Valdivia]  is  situated  on  the  low  banks  of  the  stream 
and  is  so  completely  buried  in  a  wood  of  apple  trees  that  the 
streets  are  merely  paths  in  an  orchard."  Materials  brought  from 
Santiago  were  said  to  come  from  "Chile."  Priests  and  officials 
from  Santiago  regarded  themselves  as  exiled  into  a  wilderness. 
This  was  not  Chile,  but  Chilean  territory.  In  1850  it  was  still 
in  the  Convict  Zone,  to  which  criminals  were  banished.  The 
poorer  Chileans  found  it  hard  to  get  land,  even  when  willing  to 
undertake  the  difficult  task  of  clearing  it.  First,  they  had  to 
apply  to  an  official  surveyor,  paying  him  50  cents  (United  States) 
for  each  auidra  (nearly  i}4  acres).  Then  the  surveyor  fixed  a 
price  and  put  the  land  up  at  auction  three  times.  If  no  one  bid 
higher  than  the  appraised  value,  the  applicant  might  have  it  at 
that  price. 

From  the  earliest  days  of  independence  the  Chilean  govern- 
ment appears  to  have  been  desirous  of  attracting  foreign  coloni- 
zation. The  law  of  1824  provided  that  a  foreigner  who  would 
(i)  set  up  in  Chile  a^iactory  to  work  Chilean  products,  use 
Chilean  workmenp'and  make  no  secret  of  his  processes  could 
be  granted  land  for  factory  and  plantation  and  exemption  from 
all  tax  for  a  period  of  years;  a  foreigner  who  would  (2)  settle 
in  Chile  as  agriculturist  could  be  given  land  at  the  discretion  of 
the  authorities  and  exemption  for  10  years  or  more  from  tax  on 
the  products  of  wild  land  that  he  made  productive.  The  law  of 
1845  provided  (i)  that  the  President  might  assign  a  suitable 
part  of  6,000  cuadras  of  vacant  land  owned  by  the  state  to  es- 
tablish colonies  of  natives  and  foreigners  who  came  to  the  coun- 
try to  settle  down  and  carry  on  some  useful  trade  there  and  might 

*2  Compare  Holdich's  comment  {op-  cit.,  p.  308)  "Beautiful  glades  in  the  forest 
where  grass  undulations  stretch  in  many  folds  from  one  wall  of  trees  to  another, 
inviting  European  colonization." 


THE  VALDIVIA  COLONY  19 

give  them  tools,  seeds,  and  other  things  necessary  for  cuhivating 
the  ground  and  for  help  the  first  year,  and  afterwards  aid  them 
further;  (2)  that  lands  given  in  Creole  Chile  were  not  to  exceed  8 
cuadras  for  a  father  and  4  more  for  each  son  over  14  years  of  age, 
and  north  or  south  of  Creole  Chile  were,  not  to  exceed  24  cuadras 
for  a  father  and  12  more  for  each  son  over  14;  (3)  that  the 
Treasury  should  pay  the  cost  to  be  reimbursed  as  the  President 
might  provide;  (4)  that  there  should  be  20  years'  exemption  of 
taxation;  and  (5)  that  all  such  colonists  should  become  and 
formally  declare  themselves  Chileans.  The  law  of  1845  provides 
for  natives  as  well  as  foreigners,  but  the  only  instance  in  which 
the  interests  of  the  former  were  met  appears  to  be  the  distribu- 
tion made  at  Human  (see  p.  10). 

The  government,  however,  was  hard  up  and  failed  to  give 
the  early  colonists  the  help  that  had  been  promised.  The  early 
German  settlers  got  along  only  because  they  brought  money 
with  them  (Hoerll  estimates  $200,000  in  1850-1858).  Further- 
more, the  actual  beginnings  of  colonization  were  unofficial. 

The  Valdivia  Colony 

Ferdinand  Flindt,  a  Valparaiso  merchant  and  quondam  Prus-- 
sian  consul,  had  bought  1,000  cuadras  of  land  for  his  firm  be- 
tween La  Uni6n  and  Osorno  and  conceived  the  idea  of  bringing 
a  number  of  skilled  German  laborers  and  their  families  for 
its  better  development.  He  made  his  arrangem^nts_  dirpugh 
B.  E.  Philippi,  who  had  a  brother  in  Germany  at  Kassel,  and 
eight  families  arrived  in  August,  1846.  There  were  two  black- 
''^rTTiths^,~a  Carpenter,  a  cabinetmaker,  a  millwright,  a  shoemaker, 
a  gardener,  and  a  shepherd.  They  had  experienced  trying 
weather  in  their  four  months'  voyage  and  "suTfereJ  a  distinct 
shock  at~sigh't  of  the  wretched  hovels  of  Valdivia — mere  posts 
witti  arro'of  of  thatch  and  the  dirt  for  floor.  For  further  dis- 
couragement the  news  met  them  at  Valdivia  that  Flindt,  their 
patron,  had  failed.    However,  another  German,  named  Kinder- 


giann,  bought  the  property  and  renewed  the  contract;  and,  best 
of  all,  tHe^  workmen  fouSd  their  skill  in  immediate  demand  at 


20  RECENT  COLONIZATION  IN  CHILE 

wages  that  seemed  to  them  munificent.  They  appear  to  have 
settled  at  Bella  Vista,  the  place  for  which  Flindt  had  destined 
them,  and  it  is  probable  that  the  weather  of  1846-1847  was 
unusually  agreeable.  They  wrote  home  letters  expressing  the 
greatest  enthusiasm  for  southern  Chile,  praising  the  soil,  the 
climate,  and  the  freedom  and  lack  of  all  oppression  there.  The 
letters  must  have  had  strong  influence  in  Germany.  These 
-first  families  were  Protestants. 

For  several  years  the  Chilean  government,  which  consisted  of 
the  great  Creole  landowners  of  central  Chile,  had  been  planning 
German  immigration  with  a  view  to  settling  Valdivia.  Philippi 
Ihad  carefully  worked  out  a  plan  which  was  accepted,  and  in 
July,  1848,  he  was  sent  as  the  representative  of  the  Chilean 
government  to  bring  some  hundreds  of  families  of  skilled  workers 
from  Germany,  with  the  proviso  that  they  were  to  be  Catho- 
lics. Another  agent  was  sent  to  Ireland  to  get  three  or  four  hun- 
dred Catholic  families  from  there.  Meanwhile  Kindermann  had 
gone  to  Germany  to  get  more  settlers.  These  he  meant  to  place 
on  lands  which  his  father-in-law  had  "bought"  from  the  Indians. 
The  purchase  was  a  farce  on  both  sides.  The  Indians,  on  the 
one  hand,  made  up  camp  after  camp  on  pieces  of  land  that 
Renous  desired,  entertained  him  at  these  camps  as  owners,  and 
went  through  the  pretense  of  a  sale,  while  he,  for  his  part,  handed 
them  some  trifle  of  insignificant  value.  In  this  way  he  had 
1  acquired  title  to  very  large  tracts.  Neither  these  titles  nor 
'Kindermann's  immigration  project  had  government  support. 
Indeed,  the  notion  of  Protestant  immigration,  especially  in 
compact  bodies,  was  naturally  distasteful  to  the  influential 
Catholic  clergy  of  Chile.  But  Kindermann  succeeded  in  arousing 
the  interest  of  an  emigration  society  in  Stuttgart,  to  whom  he 
sold  40,000  cnadras  of  his  Valdivian  lands  and  an  option  on  40,000 

['.more.    To  individuals  also  he  sold  considerable  areas  of  land. 
■V         One  of  these  was  Traugott  Bromme,  a  name  that  occurs  in  the 

I  <  thirties  on  a  number  of  German  circulars  urging  emigration  to 
Michigan.  While  Kindermann  was  winning  these  successes  by 
his   personality   and    his   recommendations   from   Germans   in 


THE  VALDIVIA  COLONY  21 

Chile,  aided  no  little  by  the  letters  sent  home  by  his  eight  con- 
tented settlers  in  Bella  Vista,  the  official  parties  inviting  Irish 
and  German  Catholics  met  no  success  at  all.  In  Germany  the 
bishops  forbade  emigration  to  Chile.  It  seemed  as  if  Catholic 
immigration  were  unattainable. 

Back  in  Chile  things  did  not  go  well.  Kindermann's  land- 
buying  father-in-law  had  roused  antagonism  by  his  operations. 
The  state  took  a  hand  and  declared  all  his  titles  void.  And  then 
— the  colonists  began  to  arrive.  All  through  the  year  1850  they 
came,  287  of  them  in  five  successive  ships,  only  to  learn  that  the 
land  which  they  had  bought  and  had  come  out  to  settle  was  not 
theirs,  had  not  belonged  to  Kindermann  at  all.  And  his  efforts 
to  have  his  land  purchases  validated  failed  completely. 

Nothing  but  the  unlimited  hospitality  and  kindness  of  the 
Chileans  of  Valdivia,  the  omnipresent  majority  which  is  given  no 
credit  for  the  "German"  colonizing,  carried  the  Germans  through 
their  troubles.  Perez  Rosales,  the  government  immigration 
agent,  proved  sympathetic,  prudent,  and  capable,  as  he  did 
throughout  his  whole  career.  Kindermann  sent  some  families 
to  Bella  Vista  to  get  land  near  there  and  at  Osorno.  The  island 
Teja  in  the  river  opposite  Valdivia  was  sold  to  others  by  the 
French  general,  Benjamin  Viel,  who  had  come  to  Chile  with 
San  Martin,  and  land  was  found  for  them  to  purchase  at  various 
points  in  the  neighborhood.  Some  families  went  north  to  the 
cities  of  Chile  proper,  though  their  ignorance  of  the  Spanish 
language  and  the  customs  of  the  country  served  largely  to  deter 
the  German  immigrants  from  this  step.  Also,  their  eager  desire 
for  land  induced  them  to  undergo  great  privations.  There  is  no 
doubt  that  they  had  to  work  much  harder  on  the  frontier  than  in 
the  cities.  At  the  same  epoch  (1870)  Franceschini-^  estimates  that_ 
there  were  3,000  Italians  in  Chile,  and  none  of  them  farm  colon- 
ists, since  "the  larger  cities  offered  greater  earnings  than  tilling 
the  soil  with  less  sacrifices."  This  is  still  true.  Probably  a  major- 
ity of  tKe  30,000  of  GerTnaa  stock  in  Chile  are  now  in  the  cities. 

''Antonio  Franceschini :  L'Emigrazione  italiana  neirAmerica  del  Sud,  Rome, 
1908,  p.  762. 


22 


RECENT  COLONIZATION  IN  CHILE 


T^ 


50 


25 


0 


SO 


100  Miles 


Fig.  7 — Little  German  colonics  in  Llanquihue.  The  Andes — here  shown  by 
stippling — occupy  half  the  width  of  Chile,  and  in  their  valleys  lie  many  alpine  lakes 
of  great  beauty,  a  natural  result  of  heavy  rainfall  and  ancient  glaciation.  The  whole 
region  is  covered  with  dense  wet  forest.  The  best  land  is  in  grassy  openings  in  the 
central  valley,  which  is  here  from  25  to  35  miles  wide.  The  Germans  settled  mainly 
about  Valdivia,  Osorno,  Puerto  Montt,  and  the  shores  of  lake  Llanquihue.  « 


THE  LLANQUIHUE  COLONY  23 

It  is  not  quite  accurate  to  say  no  Catholics  were  willing  to 
^ome  to  Chile,  for  14  persons  of  that  faith  did  come  in  the  last 
ship  of  1850.  !As  Catholics  they  enjoyed  government  protection 
from  the  start  and  were  given  good  lands  at  Cudico  near  the 
present  city  of  La  Uni6n.  A  few  other  Catholics  came  later,  and 
not  a  little  trouble  rose  between  them  and  their  Protestant 
countrymen.  Later  we  hear  of  the  leader  of  these  Cudico  Ger- 
mans at  Santiago  accusing  his  Protestant  rivals  of  attempts  to 
convert  Chileans  to  Protestantism.  A  commission  was  even  sent 
into  southern  Chile  to  investigate,  with  the  result  of  completely 
exonerating  the  Protestant  Germans  from  the  charge. 

However  great  the  hardships  that  met  the  Germans  on  their 
arrival,  the  results  of  their  activities  were  immediate.  There 
were  no  skilled  workers  in  Valdivia  before  them.  All  but  the  crud- 
est products  of  civilized  industry  the  rich  had  brought  from 
Europe,  the  poor  had  done  without.  But  now  shops  were  opened, 
wares  were  made  and  put  on  sale  at  moderate  prices,  and  money 
at  once  began  to  circulate  for  unskilled  labor  too.  Whether  the 
Chileans  admired  the  German  houses  and  German  bread  as 
much  as  the  German  narrators  would  have  us  believe,  may,  be 
open  to  doubt;  but  it  may  be  taken  for  certain  tha^  "they  were 
astonished  to  see  the  Germans  at  work  early  in  the  morning, 
keeping  on  till  nightfall  every  day  in  the  week,  with  the  master 
first  in  the  shop  and  last  to  leave  it." 

It  would  be  difficult  to  find  fault  with  the  Chilean  government 
for  not  making  arrangements  to  receive  immigrants  whom  they 
had  not  invited  and  did  not  want  and  who  had  come  when  the 
government  was  hard  up  for  money.  It  is  to  their  credit  that  they 
recognized  at  once  that  the  newcomers  were  of  the  greatest 
promise  for  the  future  of  Valdivia.  The  insistence  on  Catholic  j 
immigrants  seems  to  have  been  dropped. 

The  Llanquihue  Colony 

Yet  more  important  were  the  preparations  made  to  receive  the 
immigrants  still  to  come.  The  government  had  made  beginnings 
ot   land  surveys  for  the  Catholic  colonists  that   Philippi  was 


24  RECENT  COLONIZATION  IN  CHILE 

to  have  brought.  Perez  Rosales  "^^  now  went  with  an  engineer  to 
the  shores  of  Lake  Llanquihue  in  the  hope  of  finding  that  its 
southern  end  was  somewhere  near  the  sea,  since  the  universal 
badness  of  the  roads  made  the  interior  of  Valdivia  ahnost  useless. 
Such  a  trip  was  an  exploring  expedition  of  a  very  serious  kind. 
Plenty  of  good  land  was  found,  but  it  was  overgrown  by  wet 
forests.  The  Indians  were  set  to  remove  them  by  burning  in  the 
district  between  Osorno  and  the  lake.  In  three  months  this 
was  accomplished,  not  thoroughly,  but  sufficiently  in  the  driest 
places  to  afford  land  enough  for  the  time  being.  The  commander 
of  a  Chilean  warship  at  Ancud  was  commissioned  to  cruise 
to  the  eastward  and  look  for  an  approach  to  Lake  Llanquihue. 
He  found  the  Gulf  of  Reloncavi,  with  a  settlement  of  Indian 
woodcutters  at  its  northern  end  where  Puerto  Montt  now  stands. 
The  lake,  they  told  him,  was  but  12  miles  away.  The  woodcutters 
put  us  in  touch  with  the  only  important  industry  of  the  region 
in  the  early  days — that  of  bringing  out  boards  or  logs  from  the 
forests  on  the  heads  of  Indians  or  by  horses  or  canoes.  Captain 
Basil  Hall,  who  took  San  Martin  up  the  coast  to  Peru  in  1820, 
reports  purchasing  at  Tome,  near  Concepci6n,  beams  20  feet 
long  by  a  foot  square  at  five  shillings  apiece.  The  wood,  he  says, 
was  Liiie  (lingue?),  "as  good  as  ash."  ^^ 

Meantime  new  arrivals  had  been  gathering  at  Corral,  where 
they  had  no  better  shelter  than  the  old  Spanish  fortress,  and  their 
number  had  been  augmented  by  some  of  the  earlier  colonists 
whose  land  had  turned  out  to  be  poor.  Rosales  felt  that  he  could 
not  wait  to  explore  the  road  from  the  gulf  to  the  lake  but  set 
out  at  once  with  a  shipload  of  212  German  colonists  from  Corral 
to  Puerto  Montt.  They  immediately  set  to  work  on  cutting  a 
road  to  connect  with  Lake  Llanquihue.  The  passage  through  the 
woods  from  this  point  to  the  lake  proved  to  be  extraordinarily 
difficult.  The  woods  were  so  wet  they  would  not  burn  at  all ;  the 
ground  was  a  veritable  sponge  into  which  one  sank  at  every  step. 

2*  Perez  Rosales,  pp.  399-418. 

25  Captain  Basil  Hall:  Extracts  from  a  Journal  Written  on  the  Coasts  of  Chile, 
Peru,  and  Mexico  in  the  Years  1820,  1821,  1822,  4th  edit.,  2  vols.,  Edinburgh,  1825; 
reference  in  Vol.  i,  p.  348. 


Fig.  8 — Puerto  Montt  on  the  Gulf  of  Reloncavi,  dominated  by  the  quarters  of  the 
Llanquihue  regiment. 


Fig.  9 — German  houses  at  Puerto  Montt,  of  wood  with  roof  of  corrugated  iron. 
Windows,  roof,  and  the  whole  aspect  of  the  house  are  foreign  to  South  America. 


THE  LLANQUIHUE  COLONY  25 

The  first  day  two  of  the  immigrants  perished  in  the  mud  of  the 
forest.  The  road  had  to  be  cut  out  with  the  ax,  step  by  step. 
It  took  several  months  to  traverse  the  12  miles.  Meanwhile  a 
road  was  also  being  cut  from  Osorno  to  Llanquihue.  The  Lake 
Llanquihue  colony  was  formally  opened  on  February  12,  1853, 
at  Puerto  Montt.   That  was  in  the  summer  dry  season. 

That  fall  (April)  Perez  Resales  left  them  for  Santiago,  after 
making  a  contract  with  Ruiz  de  Arce  of  Valdivia  to  supply  the 
colonists  with  stipulated  rations  of  food  through  the  winter. 
We  can  understand  his  eagerness  to  get  back  to  Chile,  into  sun- 
light and  out  of  the  incessant  rains,  after  his  long  expedition 
through  the  woods  the  year  before,  his  illness  that  resulted  from 
the  upsetting  of  his  dugout  canoe  on  the  lake,  and  his  many 
efforts  to  provide  necessities  and  encouragement  for  the  disap- 
pointed colonists.  But  for  the  colonists  there  was  no  escape  to 
homes  in  sunny  Creole  lands.  The  winter  that  followed  was  one 
to  try  their  souls,  and  they  were  sorely  unprepared  to  meet  it. 
They  had  been  busy  clearing  the  forest  and  had  made  no  plan- 
tations as  yet.  The  contractor  on  w^hom  their  food  supply 
depended  sent  them  nothing  at  all,  and  Osorno,  their  nearest 
point  of  supply,  was  72  miles  away  through  well-nigh  trackless 
forest.  That  May  and  June  the  rains  were  extraordinarily 
heavy.  The  country  about  Lake  Llanquihue,  always  moss- 
grown  and  oozy  for  the  greater  part  of  the  year,  was  fairly  flooded 
with  water;  and  communication  through  the  woods  became 
almost  impossible.  It  happens  that  we  have  records  of  rainfall 
that  year  at  Valdivia,  just  begun  by  a  rather  remarkable  German 
named  KarLAnwandtpr,  ex-mayor  of  Kalau  in  Germany  and  an 
ex-member  of  the  First  Prussian  Assembly  and  of  the  Prussian 
Assembly  of  1848.  He  continued  the  series  for  many  years,  and 
it  shows  the  calamitous  character  of  the  wet  season  of  1853  when 
a  dry  January  was  followed  by  a  fearfully  wet  May  and  June. 

In  all  the  years  since  then,  May  has  had  a  greater  rainfall 
only  once  and  June  but  twice.  Only  in  1854  have  the  two  months 
May  and  June  together  had  so  much  rain  as  this.  Thus  their  first 
two  winters  were  harder  for  the  newcomers  than  any  year  since. 


26 


RFXENT  COLONIZATION  IN  CHILE 


The  sufferings  of  that  winter  of  1853  were  terrible.  There 
was  no  game  in  the  woods,^^  and  there  were  no  provisions  on 
hand.  Men  had  to  set  out  for  Osorno  through  the  flooded  forests 
and  bring  back  what  they  could  get  on  their  backs.  One  settler 
perished  in  crossing  a  flooded  stream.  No  wonder  some  were  dis- 
couraged. It  must  not  be  forgotten,  however,  that  their  sufferings 


Fig.  10 — Diagram  of  monthly  rainfall  at  Valdivia  in  inches.  The  thin  line  shows 
the  rainfall  from  the  mean  of  27  years,  the  thick  one  that  of  1852-53,  to  illustrate 
the  extraordinary  wetness  of  the  first  season  the  Germans  spent  on  Lake  Llanquihue. 
Rain  enough  for  a  year  fell  in  May,  still  more  in  June. 


WTre  purely  physical.  They  had  come  out  of  the  oppression  of 
German  peasant  life  of  1848.  Here  they  were  free  and  in  homes 
of  their  own.  The  Chileans  were  always  kind  and  helpful  when 
they  reached  them.  The  bad  season  was  fought  through,  and 
from  that  time  things  began  to  mend.  With  the  harvests  and, 
above  all,  the  products  of  German  handicraft  money  began  to 

^  It  seems  agreed  by  all  writers  that  the  Chilean  forests  lack  wild  game.  The 
author  saw  ragged  boys  set  out  gleefully  from  Puerto  Montt  with  guns  and  game 
bags  in  May,  1918,  who  seemed  to  match  nicely  with  other  boys  with  big  bunches 
of  partridges  at  stations  a  few  miles  north.  But  it  appears  certain  that  settlers  in  the 
Chilean  forests  found  none  of  the  help  from  hunting  that  pioneers  in  the  United 
States  enjoyed. 


EARLY  GERMAN  SETTLEMENTS  27 

circulate  in  Valdivia  in  a  region  where  the  only  currency  hereto- 
fore had  been  planks  from  the  forest. 

By  1 86 1  the  colonization  of  Valdivia  and  Llanquihue — set 
off  from  Valdivia  in  that  year — was  complete.  The  government 
of  Chile  had  spent  $105,000  on  the  undertakings,  of  which 
$40,000  was  for  the  road  from  Puerto  Montt  to  Lake  Llanquihue, 
the  only  good  road — i.e.  passable  for  anything  but  ox  teams  in 
bad  weather — in  southern  Chile.  Good  land  cannot  have  been 
very  abundant  in  Llanquihue,  or  something  kept  it  out  of  use, 
for  presently  the  sons  of  settlers  and  some  settlers  themselves 
whose  lands  turned  out  badly  appear  in  Chiloe  or  even  farther 
north  and  in  the  Argentine  seeking  land  for  settlement.  Very  un- 
favorable reports  were  spread  in  Germany  about  this  time  as  to 
the  suitability  of  Chile  for  colonization — reports  spread  partly 
by  colonists  who  had  made  the  attempt  and  failed.  The  for- 
bidding of  emigration  to  Brazil  by  the  Prussian  minister  Heydt 
undoubtedly  influenced  all  emigration  from  Germany.  There  is 
no  mention  in  the  German  accounts  of  Puerto  Montt  of  the  part 
Chileans  played  in  the  settlement.  Today  they  are  six  times  as 
numerous  as  the  Germans.  Indian  blood  is  very  strong  in  them, 
as  it  was  when  Darwin  saw  them  in  1835;  but  those  who  know 
them  differentiate  them  strongly  from  the  Indians.  All  insist 
that  the  Chileans  are  a  race. 

Success  of  the  Early  German  Settlements 
The  German  settlements  of  Valdivia  and  Llanquihue  had 
succeeded  in  introducing  into  the  southern  forests  settlers  of 
European  race  around  whom  great  numbers  of  Chileans  gathered. 
They  succeeded  in  introducing  much-needed  handicrafts,  shoe 
factories,  tanneries,  and  breweries,  the  products  of  which  were 
wanted  and  had  previously  been  brought  from  Europe  at  greater 
cost.  They  had  given  value  to  worthless  southern  lands.  They 
had  aided  in  bringing  law  and  order  into  forests  that  had  been  a 
safe  refuge  for  cattle  thieves.  They  made  possible  the  extension 
of  the  great  valley  railway  to  Puerto  Montt  at  the  southern 
extremity  of  the  central  valley  of  Chile.    And  it  may  be  added 


28  RECENT  COLONIZATION  IN  CHILE 

that  numerous  clean  and  comfortable  little  German  hotels  make 
practicable  touring  of  the  lovely  Llanquihue  lake  district  in  the 
drier  months  of  the  year. 

These  were  great  accomplishments,  so  significant  and  im- 
^  portant  to  Chile,  indeed,  that  it  is  hard  to  realize  how  slight 
1  a  thing  numerically  the  German  element  was  and  is.  Up  to  1864, 
\  when  the  settling  of  Llanquihue  was  practically  finished,  3,367 
K  persons  in  all  had  come,  to  whom  must  be  added  a  few  hundred 
J  Catholic  German  Bohemians  in  1873  and  1875.  As  there  was  al- 
ways a  movement  from  the  forest  colonies  to  the  cities  of  Chile 
proper,  the  whole  number  of  Germans  who  stayed  can  hardly 
have  been  larger  than  3,000.  Two  things  are  clear:  that  the  in- 
dustry and  persistence  of  these  few  German  peasants  and  crafts- 
men had  enormous  significance  compared  with  the  accomplish- 
ment of  the  Chilean  roto,  who  had  much  less  technical  knowledge 
and  a  very  low  standard  of  life;  and  that  it  is  absurd  to  say 
that  Valdivia  and  Llanquihue  have  become  "wholly  German." 
/  The  Germans  r  •  less  than  four  per  cent  of  the  population  of 
,  Valdivia,  less  \..,^\\  five  per  cent  of  that  of  Llanquihue.  It  is 
certain,  however,  that  the  Chilean  government  could  not  view 
with  entire  satisfaction  the  fact  that  the  Germans  did  not  be- 
come Chileans.  Their  Chileanizing  seems  to  consist  in  having 
.learned  Spanish,  which  they  generally  know,  and  in  wearing  the 
poncho.  They  have  retained  and  cultivated  every  German 
institution  and  custom  in  support  of  which  the  German  Empire 
showed  a  very  active  zeal.  (^By  1904  there  were  31  German 
^^^^^T^  schools  in  the  south,  attended  by  2,400  pupils  and  in  some  part 
'  supported  by  funds  from  Germany.  Though  Chile  did  not  and 
probably  could  not  provide  Chilean  schools,  the  presence  of 
foreign  schools  in  her  territory  was  disquieting.  Also  the  Germans 
were  mostly  Protestant,  and  Chile  is  officially  Catholic.  So  the 
Chileans  would  have  liked  more  colonization  like  that  of  the 
Germans  yet  not  so  completely  German.  In  the  colonization  of 
the  Frontera,  which  followed  and  took  proportions  ten  times  as 
great,  immigrants  were  sought  from  many  countries,  but  the 
results  have  not  been  so  striking. 


THE  FRONTERA 


29 


Arauco,  Bio-Bio,  Mal'.eco,  and  Cautin. 


(■; 


ii 


THE  FRONTERA  29 

The  Frontera  in  Chilean  History 
Up  to  the  period  of  modern  colonizing  the  Frnntera  was 
distinctly  a  dominant  feature  in  Chilean  geography.  As  we  have 
said,  the  Frontera  is  the  beginning  of  the  wooded  country  of 
southern  Chile;  and  itwas  here  that  the  Araucanian  Indians  found 
support  in  their  three  centuries  of  heroic  resistance  to  the  Span- 
iards. The  frontier  indeed  is  still  older;  for  the  Araucanians  offered 
a  like  resistance  to  the  Incas,  who  failed  to  extend  their  conquests 
beyond  the  Rio  Maule  (about  35°  30'  S.)-  The  northern  limit  of 
"'Araucania"  may  be  taken  approximately  as  the  River  Bio-Bio; 
but  during  the  first  hundred  years  of  Spanish  rule  the  effective 
frontier  was  probably  the  Rio  Maule,  and  there  were  several  raids 
across  the  stream,  Santiago  even  being  threatened  on  occasion. 
By  the  peace  of  Quillin  in  the  mid-seventeenth  century  the  Bio- 
Bio  was  formally  recognized  as  the  frontier.  The  rights  of  the 
Araucanians  to  the  territory  south  of  the  river  were  recognized  by 
treaty  at  the  date  of  Chilean  independence.  The  Araucanian 
holdings  south  of  the  Bio-Bio,  however,  did  not  continue  to  the 
southern  extremity  of  the  great  valley.  In  the  open  glades  farther 
south  Spanish  settlements  eariy  displaced  the  Indians.  Pedro  de 
Valdivia,  the  conqueror  of  Chile,  established  a  series  of  forts  be 
tween  Concepci6n  and  Valdivia.  The  forts  m  the  Frontera  proper 
were  immediately  destroyed,  and  Valdivia  himself  was  killed 
by  torture  on  the  ruins  of  Tucapel,  January  I,  I554-"  Attempts 
at  re-establishment  were  never  successful;  but  beyond  the 
Frontera  at  Valdivia,  Osorno,  La  Union,  and  Calbuco  on  the 
mainland  and  at  Ancud  and  Castro  in  the  island  of  Chiloe  Spanish 
settlement,  despite  many  vicissitudes,  was  fairly  permanent.^ 

On  the  south  the  Frontera  had  no  definite  limit.  The  Province 
of  Valdivia,  south  of  the  Frontera,  was  formed  in  1826  as  one  of 
the  original  eight  provinces  of  the  republic  and  had  no  definite 
northern  boundary.  Not  till  1852  ^s  was  the  River  Token  assigned 

2'  M.  L.  Amunategui:  Descubrimiento  i  conquista  de  Chile,  2nd  edit..  Santiago, 

^^'itsM  this  same  date  Arauco  was  formed  from  the  part  of  Concepci6n  west  of 
the  Sierra  Nahuelbuta.  Concepcion  was  one  of  the  eight  provmces  mto  wh^h 
Chile  was  divided  in  1826.  It  consisted  of  the  present  provmces  of  ConcepciOn. 
Arauco,  Bio-Bio.  Malleco.  and  Cautin. 


30  RECENT  COLONIZATION  IN  CHILE 

to  bound  it  on  the  north.  That  was  the  first  southern  boundary 
of  the  Frontera.  In  the  Valdivian  region  there  were  Indians  here 
and  there,  probably  in  the  rare  openings  in  the  woods,  and  there 
were  also  scattered  Chilean  settlements.  It  is  probable  that  the 
very  density  of  the  forest  kept  the  Indians  farther  north.  This 
explains  the  singular  character  of  a  frontier  which  limited  Chile 
on  the  south  but  at  the  same  time  had  Chilean  settlements 
beyond  it.   It  was  a  zone  some  140  miles  wide. 

The  Araucanian  Indians  as  Forest  Indians 
All  over  America  there  has  been  a  striking  contrast  between 
the  Indian  of  the  forest,  living  by  the  hunting  and  fishing  that  the 
forest  provided,  and  the  Indian  of  the  drier  lands,  who  has  raised 
himself  by  irrigation  of  the  soil  to  beginnings  of  agricultural  life 
and  sedentary  culture.  The  forest  Indian  has  been  savage  and 
unconquerable.  With  his  stone  ax  he  could  kill  his  food,  but  he 
could  not  cut  down  the  trees  of  the  forest.  He  must  live  by 
hunting  and  fishing;  he  must  fight  for  the  use  of  his  hunting 
ground.  He  became  a  ready  fighter.  The  Indian  of  the  arid 
lands  has  a  good  soil  that  the  forest  cannot  occupy  because  it  is 
too  dry,  upon  which  he  is  able  to  bring  water  from  a  stream  by 
simple  appliances.  His  labor  yields  him  abundant  food  but 
requires  him  in  return  to  tie  himself  to  the  spot.  He  is  confronted 
with  civilization's  earliest  problems — division  of  land,  water 
rights,  and  construction  of  permanent  houses.  The  permanent 
house  encourages  the  development  of  the  arts  that  supply  the 
house  with  utensils  and  furnishings.  Agricultural  and  artisan 
classes  arise  who  do  not  fight. 

Asiatic  and  European  cultures  dawned  in  the  arid  valleys  of 
the  Euphrates  and  the  Nile  and  throve  about  the  semiarid  shores 
of  the  Mediterranean.  These  latter  cultures  had  to  fall  before  the 
repeated  onslaughts  of  barbarians  from  the  forest  glades  of 
Germany.  The  Indians  of  the  semiarid  plateaus  of  Mexico,  Peru, 
and  Bolivia  sent  their  warrior  class  to  meet  the  handful  of  Span- 
ish invaders.  They  were  defeated ;  and  at  once  the  whole  social 
organization  found  the  Spaniards  at  its  head  in  place  of  the 


SETTLING  THE  FRONTERA  31 

ruling  Indians.    Most  remarkable  is  the  rapidity  with  which  the 
Spaniard  became  master  of  the  whole  American  semiarid  region. 

The  forest  Indian  of  the  eastern  United  States  was  pushed 
slowly  backward  to  the  Mississippi  Basin,  to  the  plains  and  the 
Rockies,  as  the  young  republic  expanded  between  them  and  the 
Atlantic.  The  Indians  of  the  United  States  were  fought  and  were 
defeated  and  were  put  on  reservations  throughout  three  cen- 
turies. The  Indians  of  the  Uruguayan  woods  delayed  settlement 
of  Montevideo  for  nearly  two  hundred  years.  Fiercest  and  most 
successful  of  all,  the  Araucanians  maintained  themselves  in  the 
Chilean  forests  to  our  days,  undefeated.  So  much  did  they  hate 
the  white  man  and  so  little  did  they  fear  him  that  within  a  genera- 
tion two  of  their  warriors  have  been  known  to  attack  a  regiment 
of  Chilean  troops  in  broad  day  so  ferociously  that,  although  the 
Chileans  were  ordered  to  take  them  alive  and  tried  to,  they  had  to 
kill  them.  Another  Araucanian  carried  off  a  boy  out  of  the  midst 
of  a  regimental  band  by  a  sudden  rush  after  riding  up  and  down 
the  line  and  putting  a  spirited  horse  thiough  his  paces  to  distract 
attention. 

Settling  the  Frontera 

The  successful  settlement  of  the  Germans  in  the  almost  im- 
passable forests  of  the  south  gave  interest  to  the  Frontera  as  the 
possible  site  of  further  European  settlements.  As  a  matter  of 
fact,  the  time  had  long  gone  by  when  Chile  had  room  for  immi- 
gration. The  arrival  of  immigrants  always  found  the  authorities 
in  trouble  to  get  land  on  which  to  place  them.  In  1864  the  only 
unoccupied  lands  in  Chile  suitable  for  colonization  were  in  the 
Frontera,  which  a  treaty  reserved  to  the  Indians.  Most  oppor- 
tunely in  that  year  occurred  an  Indian  uprising  that  relieved 
the  Chileans  of  obligation  to  respect  the  treaty.  Chilean  troops 
armed  with  modern  repeating  firearms  began  the  conquest  of 
the  Frontera,  land  became  available,  and  new  colonization  laws 
were  passed  with  the  dates  1868,  1870,  1871,  and  1873.  The 
law  of  1868  proposed  "to  aid  the  poor  farm  laborers  and  increase 
with  them  the  population  of  the  Frontera."  The  land  was  to  be 
sold  cheaply  on  long  term  without  interest,  20  hectares  on  le\-el 


32  RECENT  COLONIZATION  IN  CHILE 

land  and  40  in  the  hills  to  the  head  of  the  family,  with  10  more 
for  each  son  over  14  years  old.  Seeds,  tools,  houses,  and  money 
assistance  were  to  be  given  on  similar  terms.  The  settler  had  to 
fence,  build,  and  cultivate  some  land  within  a  fixed  term  or  lose 
his  title.  Experience  in  the  south  had  been  that  the  immigrant 
paid  for  his  land  in  a  moderate  term  of  years.  The  government 
was  never  exigent  with  them  and  forgave  obligations  that  turned 
out  to  be  unreasonable.  The  difficulty  in  colonizing  with  Chileans 
was  that  they  had  no  money  and  were  less  resourceful  and  am- 
bitious than  the  Germans,  and  the  government  never  showed 
them  the  consideration  it  exhibited  toward  foreigners.  But 
the  trial  was  made  with  some  60  families  from  Valparaiso  and 
Lima.  There  was  no  sort  of  system  in  choosing  them.  They 
seem  to  have  been  the  first  persons  found  willing  to  go.  Nor 
were  they  suitable.  Only  1 1  of  them  had  had  experience  in  farm 
work.  The  city  life  they  were  used  to  was  much  less  laborious 
than  pioneering  in  the  forest.  Then  the  Indians  were  hostile, 
burned  houses,  destroyed  crops,  and  killed  some  of  the  settlers. 
For  the  further  discomfiture  of  the  colonists  the  year  1870  was 
so  dry  that  crops  failed.  They  could  hardly  get  water  to  drink. 
At  Talca,  the  nearest  station  where  meteorological  records  were 
kept,  but  15  inches  of  rain  were  registered  of  a  usual  27  inches. 
Many  of  the  settlers  left  the  colony,  and  the  movement  was 
called  a  failure.  The  affair  was  supposed  to  show  that  the 
Chilean  laboring  class  was  not  suitable  for  colonizing.  Still, 
25  of  these  families  remained  on  the  land  and  acquired  title,  and 
367  others  bought  land  within  the  next  year,  1871,  in  various 
parts  of  the  Frontera."^^  It  is  true  they  were  Chilean  families, 
they  brought  no  new  standard  of  life,  they  had  not  the  Euro- 
pean's knowledge  of  the  arts,  they  founded  no  new  industries 
that  would  provide  work  for  laborers,  as  the  Germans  had  done 
in  the  south.  They  did  not,  therefore,  so  rapidly  increase  the 
value  of  neighboring  land.  To  the  land  speculator,  who  was 
soon  to  control  the  whole  situation,  they  did  not  bring  quick 
enough  results.    For  the  Chilean  nation  nothing  better  could 

2»  Palacios.  Vol.  2,  p.  236. 


Fig.  II — An  ordinary  Temuco  street.  Temuco  is  a  new  town  in  tlie  Frontera 
founded  in  1881.  It  is  quite  uncreole  in  its  aspect.  The  houses  of  wood  or  corru- 
gated iron  are  very  dreary.  They  afford  the  passers-by  no  glimpse  into  patios 
adorned  with  shrubs  and  flowers. 


Fig.  12 — Chilean  laborer's  house  on  a  German  property  near  Valdivia.    The  rail 
fence  attests  the  abundance  of  wood.  Rain  was  falling  when  the  picture  was  taken. 


SETTLING  THE  FRONTERA  33 

happen  than  getting  these  men  into  possession  of  Chilean  soil. 
No  Creole  laborer  in  America  is  a  better  worker  than  the  Chilean 
roto,  none  gives  better  value  for  his  wages.  His  standard  of 
living  is  low,  his  wants  are  quickly  satisfied.  He  will  cultivate 
less  land  than  a  European  peasant  and  be  satisfied  with  a  smaller 
yield,  but  he  is  the  countryman  of  the  ruling  oligarchy  of  Chile. 
He  is  still  with  them  when  the  immigrant  arrives.  He  con- 
stitutes the  mass  of  the  Chilean  nation.  His  standards  of  living 
are  not  raised  by  ejecting  him  from  his  farm  to  give  it  to  Germans, 
Italians,  or  Boers.  This  practice  has  made  him  a  vagabond  in 
his  own  land  and  an  emigrant  to  the  Argentine,  where  his  labor 
meets  a  better  reward. 

A  good  many  of  the  takers  of  land  in  1871  were  not  agricultur- 
ists and  sold  their  lots.  Selling  means  buying,  and  from  about 
this  time  dates  a  growing  speculation  in  land  by  the  "rich  Santia- 
gueiios,"  some  of  them  in  office  and  all  influential.  These  buyers 
did  not  always  farm.  Some  of  them  never  pretended  to  do  so. 
The  obligations  of  the  colonist  were  not  enforced  against  them. 
They  meant  to  hold  the  land  for  a  rise  in  price.  Then  the  at- 
tempt was  made  to  get  foreigners  already  resident  in  Chile  to 
take  lots  under  this  law.  Failure  again.  Those  who  did  so  sold 
their  lots  in  too  many  cases  without  occupying  them.  They 
preferred  city  work  in  Ch  le,  the  attractiveness  of  which  was 
quite  unknown  to  the  German  settlers  in  Valdivia,  who  had  no 
contact  with  the  real  Chile. 

In  1 87 1  the  experiment  was  made  of  renting  land  to  poor  Chil- 
eans who  would  clear  and  till  it,  at  15  to  20  cents  Chilean  a 
hectare.  Nothing  could  suit  the  roto  better.  It  called  for  no 
initial  capital.  It  imposed  no  obligations.  By  1873  there  were 
56,000  hectares  of  land  rented  under  this  project,  probably  to 
two  or  three  thousand  Chileans,  engaged  in  the  highly  desirable 
work  of  getting  more  Chilean  land  cleared  of  encumbering  forest 
and  broken  for  crops.  The  contribution  made  by  the  roto  to  this 
task  is  larger  than  he  has  had  credit  for.  Rarely  did  the  best  class 
of  European  immigrants  know  how  to  go  at  the  work  of  the  New 
World  pioneer.   Almost  invariably  they  had  to  be  taught,  they 


34  RECENT  COLONIZATION  IN  CHILE 

had  to  be  shown  by  the  Chilean  peon,  or  they  had  to  hire  the 
peon  to  do  the  work.  But  whether  by  intention  or  not,  the  law 
gave  the  renter  no  security  of  tenure.  The  term  of  rental  ex- 
pired at  the  will  of  the  government  without  any  recompense  for 
improvements.  The  land  might  be  taken  away  from  the  tenant 
on  the  eve  of  harvest — and  this  actually  happened — when  the 
*  land  was  wanted  for  another  occupant. 

In  1873  was  inaugurated  the  unfortunate  system  of  auction 
sales  of  public  lands  for  a  third  of  the  value  down  and  thereafter 
ten  annual  instalments  without  interest.  This  was  unfortunate, 
because  it  has  tended  ever  since  to  deprive  the  mass  of  Chileans 
of  land  in  their  own  country  and  also  because  it  has  provided  the 
rich  with  opportunity  for  enormous  gains  at  the  expense  of  the 
country's  welfare.  The  Treasury,  it  is  true,  got  cash,  which  it 
greatly  needed  in  those  days.  An  immediate  consequence  of  the 
auction  sales  was  the  legal  eviction  from  the  lands  sold  of  renters 
and  squatters,  hard-working  Chileans  who  were  entitled  to  the 
protection  of  their  government.  The  evictions  were  carried  out 
by  the  very  efficient  Chilean  police.  Nothing  has  done  more  to 
prepare  Chile  for  the  work  of  the  socialists  and  anarchists  that 
are  in  evidence  in  the  land  today  than  these  evictions  of  poor 
Chileans  in  the  interest  of  the  rich  people  of  the  cities. 

At  this  time,  1879- 188 1,  came  the  War  of  the  Pacific,  between 
Peru,  Bolivia,  and  Chile.  It  not  merely  showed  the  military 
supremacy  of  Chile  on  the  western  coast  and  gave  her  possession 
of  a  vast  fortune  in  guano  and  nitrates,  but  it  also  tended  to  knit 
all  classes  of  Chileans  together  in  a  consciousness  of  nationality, 
rich  and  poor  alike,  for  the  sons  of  the  rich  shirked  none  of  the 
dangers  of  battle.  Most  remarkable  was  the  effect  on  the  Arau- 
canian  Indians.  They  sent  a  contingent  to  the  war.  It  dis- 
tinguished itself  greatly  and  was  so  drawn  to  the  Chileans  by 
the  common  adventure  that  the  chiefs  consented  to  withdraw 
their  claims  of  exclusive  right  to  the  Frontera  and  accept  personal 
allotments  for  Indian  families  instead.  Thus  the  whole  Frontera 
came  into  the  hands  of  the  government,  and  a  program  of  active 
immigration  was  resolved  on,  a  program  stimulated  by  a  consider- 


SETTLING  THE  FRONTERA  35 

able  exodus  of  Chilean  workmen  after  the  war  to  the  Argentine 
Republic,  Peru,  and  Panama.  It  is  noted  that  in  1888  a  Chilean 
warship  was  sent  along  the  coast  as  far  as  California  to  repatriate 
any  Chilean  who  wanted  to  come  home.^"  In  1882  the  Paris  Gen- 
eral Agency  for  Colonization  and  Immigration  was  established. 
In  1883  a  General  Inspector  of  Lands  and  Colonization  was  ap- 
pointed, and  in  the  next  18  years  36,000  immigrants  were  in- 
troduced, about  ten  times  as  many  as  the  Germans  of  Valdivia- 
Llanquihue. 

In  round  numbers  there  were  11,000  Spaniards,  8,500  French, 
and  about  the  same  number  of  Italians,  4,000  Swiss,  about  2,000 
English,  and  2,000  Germans.  Apparently  non-Germans  had 
been  definitely  sought,  of  Latin  rather  than  Teutonic  races. 
Less  than  a  fifth  of  the  immigrants  were  Swiss,  Austrians,  and 
Germans  with  the  solidarity  of  the  common  German  tongue. 
Germans,  writing  the  history  of  colonization  in  Valdivia,  tell 
us  that  in  1850  Germany  had  been  preferred  to  other  countries 
as  a  source  of  colonists  because  she  was  then  a  small  power 
not  inclined  to  interfere  in  South  America  in  behalf  of  her  emi- 
grants as  England  and  France  had  done.  Perhaps  this  feeling 
had  disappeared  in  1882. 

Thus  it  happens  that  the  Frontera  towns  of  the  eighties  are 
very  composite  in  their  foreign  population.  Probably  their 
Germans  have  greater  solidarity  than  any  other  racial  group 
and  less  inclination  to  dissolve  into  Chilean  nationality.  The 
Englishman  grumbles  a  little  at  his  children  of  a  Chilean  mother 
speaking  only  Spanish  but,  more  often  than  the  German,  takes 
no  steps  to  prevent  it. 

CONTULMO :  AN  EXAMPLE  OF  SETTLEMENT  IN  THE  FrONTERA 

A  Frontera  town  of  very  special  aspect  is  Contulmo,  a  charming 
village  in  an  idyllic  valley  in  the  western  slopes  of  Nahuelbuta, 
the  coast  range  that  extends  about  one  hundred  miles  southward 
from  Concepcion.  For  the  two  driest  months,  January  and 
February,  it  is  a  favorite  summer  resort,  with  large,  well-painted 

*•  Franceschini,  p.  765. 


36 


RECENT  COLONIZATION  IN  CHILE 


houses  set  in  enormous  fruit  orchards  among  beautiful  hills.  A 
little  group  of  Germans  from  Berlin  founded  it  in  1884,  far  from 
the  nearest  railroad  or  even  settlement.  Their  original  destina- 
tion had  been  Traiguen,  some  50  miles  to  the  southeast.  At 
present  a  branch  of  the  railroad  from  Concepci6n  down  the 
central  valley,  on  the  eastern  side  of  Nahuelbuta,  terminates  at 
Traiguen.    In  those  days  the  terminus  was  at  Angol,  a  town  of 


100  Miles 


Fig.  13 — The  Fronlera  settlements.  More  than  a  third  of  the  width  of  Chile  is  in 
the  Andes  here.  In  the  valley  between  the  coast  range  and  the  Andes  are  Human 
where  the  Germans  forgot  their  mother  tongue,  CoUipuIli  where  the  woods  begin, 
Puren  from  which  the  Contulmo  settlers  crossed  the  range  to  eastward  when  the 
railhead  was  at  Angol,  Capitan  Pastene  village  of  Nueva  Italia,  Temuco  chief 
town  of  the  Fronlera,  and  Pitrufqucn  and  Gorbea  where  the  "Boers"  were  placed. 


SETTLING  CONTULMO  37 

7,000  on  the  northern  border  of  the  Frontera.  Two  circumstances 
had  contributed  to  turn  the  newcomers  aside  from  Traiguen, 
which  was  already  settled.  One  was  the  desire  of  their  German 
leader  to  found  a  religious  community  as  far  as  possible  with- 
drawn from  contact  with  other  men.  The  other  circumstance 
was  that  Don  Esteban  Iriarte,  governor  of  the  Department  of 
Arauco,  was  troubled  by  cattle  thieves  who  took  refuge  in  the 
Nahuelbuta  valleys.  A  German  colony  out  there,  he  thought, 
would  enable  him  to  get  rid  of  the  thieves. 

The  change  of  destination  made  the  Berliners  a  lot  of  trouble. 
It  was  the  beginning  of  the  rainy  season.  Only  ox  teams  could 
get  loads  over  the  wretched  trails,  and  ox  teams  had  been  pro- 
vided for  them  by  the  Chilean  government.  Of  course  they  knew 
nothing  about  handling  them,  could  not  even  remember  that  im- 
portant thing  for  driving  them  —  the  oxen's  names!  Oxen  ran 
away  every  night  and  every  morning  charged  their  awkward  driv- 
ers when  they  tried  to  yoke  them  up.  Wooden  axles  on  which 
turned  wooden  wheels  caught  fire  or  broke.  Wagon  boxes  came 
off  or  were  overturned  in  the  midst  of  streams,  and  women  and 
children  were  thrown  into  the  water.  At  Puren  a  two  weeks' 
downpour  compelled  the  colonists  to  wait  in  such  shelter  as 
they  could  find  there,  before  venturing  to  climb  the  washed-out 
mountain  paths  to  the  crest  of  the  range.  But  at  last  one  April 
day  they  arrived,  all  in  good  health,  at  a  group  of  houses  in  a 
clearing  made  by  the  Chileans.  Two  weeks  later  they  were 
joined  by  another  band  of  Berliners,  strangers  to  them,  who  had 
simply  followed  their  trail  to  Contulmo. 

How  came  the  houses  and  the  little  clearing  to  be  ready  for 
them?  The  story  of  Contulmo  has  been  admirably  told  by  Dr. 
Albert  Meyer.^i  He  gives  no  explicit  answer  to  the  question.  I 
quote  all  the  references  to  the  Chileans  from  his  text.  "Many 
years  before,  Chilean  countryfolk  had  settled  here  in  the  primeval 
forest  and  had  naturally  picked  out  for  themselves  the  best 
places.  The  German  colonists,  to  whom  these  partly  cleared  and 
broken  lands  were  assigned  as  property,  might  well  be  contented 

"  Deutsche  Arbeit,  Vol.  2,  pp.  68-99. 


55977 


38  RECENT  COLONIZATION  IN  CHILE 

with  their  lot."  .  .  ,  "They  had  to  share  their  home,  that  is, 
the  common  Chilean  rancho  built  of  posts  with  a  dirty  roof  of 
straw  and  a  smoking  fire  inside,  with  the  Chilean  fellow  workers, 
which  naturally  gave  rise  to  a  hundred  kinds  of  annoyance."  .  .  . 
"When  on  their  arrival  the  dirty  ranchos  were  assigned  to  the 
colonists  as  dwellings,  their  condition  was  so  far  from  Berlin 
ideals  of  a  dwelling  that  the  immigrants  shuddered  at  them  and 
couldn't  bring  themselves  at  first  to  unpack  the  chests  and 
trunks  they  had  brought  with  them  in  the  ox  carts.  The  women 
were  the  first  to  recover  their  old  energy  and  love  of  labor. 
They  tried  to  make  the  ranchos  at  least  habitable  and  contrived 
order  in  them."  And  there  was  "the  foreign  language,  the  diffi- 
culty of  understanding  their  Chilean  fellow  workers  who  had 
stayed  temporarily  on  the  land  and  worked  with  the  colonists 
for  half  the  harvest."  ^^  A  little  later  colonists  who  had  a  trade 
became  weary  of  the  hard  farm  work  and,  much  like  Americans 
in  similar  situations,  "went  into  the  nearest  cities,  got  tolerable 
wages,  and  left  the  farm  work  to  their  Chilean  fellow  workers.  ,  .  . 
At  the  time  of  the  harvest  they  either  sent  their  wives  or  came 
themselves  for  some  weeks  to  harvest  the  crop  with  the  Chileans 
and  divide  it  with  them."  The  most  remarkable  of  these  little 
comments  on  the  Chileans  which  I  have  culled  out  of  a  long  and 
interesting  account  of  the  labors  and  sufferings  of  the  Germans 
is  the  following  tribute  to  the  good  will  of  the  Chileans  toward 
the  strangers  who  had  ousted  them  from  their  homes.  "Never 
was  there  any  complaint  in  the  colony  or  the  neighborhood  of 
personal  insecurity.  Apart  from  two  murders,  which,  we  regret 
to  say,  were  committed  by  the  Germans  themselves  in  their  own 
families,  there  was  only  one  attack  known  that  cost  a  colonist 
his  life  and  has  never  been  explained.  No  organized  band  of 
highwaymen  ever  showed  itself  here."  It  is  not  clear  whether 
the  Chileans  whom  the  Germans  found  here  were  renters  or 
squatters.  But  it  is  certain  that  they  had  come  out  into  the  forest 
with  courage  and  zeal  no  whit  less  than  that  of  the  Germans  and 
enlarged  the  national  territory  by  bringing  their  portion  of  the 

'-  Deutsche  Arbeit,  pp.  75,  81,  82,  83. 


SETTLING  CONTULMO  39 

forest  lands  into  productivity.  They  had  selected  the  good  land, 
they  had  cleared  the  ground  of  trees,  they  had  built  the  ranchos, 
miserable  huts  in  which  the  roto,  like  the  South  American  peon 
everywhere,  makes  his  home.  They  had  deserved  better  of  their 
government  than  to  be  forced  to  give  place  to  Germans  who 
seem  to  have  had  no  slightest  scruple  at  ousting  them.  It  is 
certain  they  could  never  have  made  Contulmo  what  it  is  today, 
what  German  intelligence  and  resourcefulness  have  made  it. 
But  the  price  of  the  difference  has  been  the  turning  of  Chilean 
landholders  into  landless  laborers.   Was  it  worth  it? 

As  it  was,  half  of  the  Germans  left  Contulmo,  so  unattractive 
did  they  find  life  there.  They  easily  produced — or  their  Chilean 
"fellow  workers"  did — more  food  than  they  could  consume, 
but  low  prices  and  the  prohibitive  cost  of  wagon  transport 
allowed  them  no  outlet  for  their  product.  The  roads  were  in- 
describably bad.  Los  Sauces  was  32  miles  away  across  the  range, 
Caiiete  26  miles  to  the  northwest.  Men  there  were  who  set  out 
with  a  cartload  of  wheat  or  potatoes  and  after  two  weeks  of  a 
veritable  Odyssey  returned  in  rags  with  nothing  to  show  for  the 
adventure  but  oxen  so  exhausted  that  they  could  not  work 
for  months. 

Prosperity  was  unknown  at  Contulmo  until  the  colonists 
learned  that  their  cue  was  to  raise  fruit  and  honey.  Then  it 
came  at  once.  An  excellent  price  stimulated  them  to  increase 
their  product,  a  co-operative  society  took  its  sale  in  hand,  and 
the  government  helped  by  constructing  better  roads  and  pre- 
serving the  forest  trees  from  which  the  bees  got  their  honey;  and 
now  good  times  are  in  full  swing.  Only  the  railroad  is  lacking, 
and  that  will  come  soon.  They  have  done  well,  those  Germans, 
and  they  have  been  splendidly  rewarded  for  their  persevering 
work.  All  classes  in  Chile  speak  well  of  them.  But  people  out  of 
Chile  entirely  overrate  their  significance.  No  small  part  of  their 
success  is  due  to  their  despised  Chilean  neighbors.  Doubtless 
these,  too,  are  sharing  in  the  prosperity,  if  only  as  landless 
laborers  with  abundant  work.  When  the  Germans  boast  that 
they  have  not  taken  work  from  the  Chileans  in  colonizing  Chile 


40  RECENT  COLONIZATION  IN  CHILE 

but  have  given  them  abundant  work  at  "real  wages,"  one  must 
suppose  a  reference  to  the  great  Creole  estates  where  the  poorer 
people  are  expected  to  help  in  the  work  of  the  house  and  the 
estate  as  inquilinos  (tenants),  with  little  pay  apart  from  the  use 
of  their  little  field  and  much  smaller  assistance  from  time  to 
time,  as  the  patron  thinks  some  need  has  become  urgent.  What 
the  Germans  forget  is  that  these  men  are  a  large  part  of  the 
Chilean  nation  and  that  before  the  Germans  came  they  were  in 
possession  of  its  soil. 

Later  Colonies  and  Evictions 

Colonization  with  mixed  races  had  its  great  tr>'-out  in  the 
island  of  Chiloe  in  1895  and  the  following  years.^^  The  Paris 
Agency  sent  over  320  families  and,  as  usual,  without  much  ex- 
amination of  their  fitness.  Land  was  found  for  them  in  Chiloe 
by  ejecting  the  native  people.  There  were  only  20  farm  workers 
in  the  first  150  families.  Many  of  them  were  criminals,  many 
were  suffering  from  disabling  diseases,  many  were  not  in  families 
and  were  of  undesirable  trades,  as  "seamstresses"  and  "dress- 
makers." Twenty-eight  families  were  expelled — to  the  Chilean 
mainland — for  crime.  Seventy-six  were  expelled  as  useless,  and 
others  ran  away,  so  that  in  1899  only  153  families  remained. 
The  government  had  paid  for  their  transportation,  provided 
houses,  hiring  the  ejected  Chilotes  to  build  them,  as  the  immi- 
grants did  not  know  how — gave  them  tools  and  seed  with  a  sus- 
tenance allowance  for  the  first  year  and  longer  of  $30  a  month-^ 
three  times  the  monthly  wage  of  the  Chilotes.  This  they  were 
to  repay  on  easy  terms,  but  of  course  the  expelled  families  never 
made  any  payments.  The  different  nationalities  did  not,  would 
not,  work  together  but  split  into  hostile  groups.  This  unde- 
sirable state  of  affairs  the  government  had  brought  about  by 
ejecting  from  their  holdings  the  industrious  Chilotes  in  greater 
numbers  than  the  immigrants  who  were  put  in  their  places. 
Vigorous  protests  to  the  newspapers,   to  officials,  and  to  the 

^  Palacios,  Vol.  2,  p.  256.  And  see  W.  Anderson  Smith:  Temperate  Chile, 
London,  i8oy,  pp.  59-74. 


THE  BOER  COLONIES  41 

Inspector  General  brought  only  the  answer,  "It  is  to  be  hoped 
that  the  situation  will  change  of  itself  when  the  people  here 
learn  the  advantages  that  colonization  by  foreigners  brings 
along  with  it."  Apparently  that  time  has  not  come  yet. 

To  the  mainland  in  1903  came  48  families  of  "Boers,"  280  in- 
dividuals. They  were  located  at  Pitrufquen  and  Gorbea  on  the 
railroad  some  30  miles  south  of  Temuco.  Lands  were  taken  from 
Chileans  to  provide  for  them,  even  from  those  who  had  filled  all 
legal  requirements,  "unless  there  was  room  beside  the  Boers." ^* 
The  Minister's  instructions  to  the  Inspector  General  ran  thus: 
"You  will  leave  in  possession  occupiers  of  lots  who  have  built 
houses  and  fulfilled  the  conditions  necessary  to  become  Chilean 
colonists,  if  you  have  land  enough  to  locate  them  as  well  as  the 
Boers.  ...  If  you  have  not  land  enough,  you  may  give  them 
(i.e.  the  Chileans)  land  elsewhere,  paying  them  for  their  im- 
provements; or  you  may,  if  you  prefer,  leave  them  in  possession 
of  ten  hectares  and  make  up  the  rest  of  the  lot  that  is  taken  from 
them  in  lands  somewhere  else."  The  police  drove  the  Chileans 
off  the  best  lots  near  the  railway  and  then  were  set  to  teaching 
the  Boers  the  local  methods  of  agriculture.  But  the  people  of 
Chile  have  begun  to  protest  against  such  proceedings.  After  a 
useless  appeal  by  the  Temuco  authorities,  workmen's  unions 
in  Temuco  sent  a  petition  to  the  Minister  of  Colonization  calling 
attention  to  the  great  work  the  evicted  Chileans  have  accom- 
plished in  bringing  under  tillage  ground  that  was  a  wilderness. 
But  all  without  result.  Indeed,  the  government  had  declared 
its  policy  very  plainly  in  1902.  The  country  needed  foreigners, 
and  the  poor  Chilean  squatters  might  very  properly  be  dis- 
placed to  get  them.  "The  interest  of  the  country  in  a  division 
of  its  lands  among  its  own  people  is  trifling  in  comparison  with 
the  importance  of  fostering  foreign  immigration."  "In  our  judg- 
ment, we  must  give  up  the  idea  of  forming  colonies  of  our  citi- 
zens, as  it  is  contrary  to  the  clearest  rules  that  should  govern 
in  this  matter."  ^^  Incidentally,  it  is  stated  that  the  much-talked- 

"  Palacios,  Vol.  2,  p.  280. 
•^  Ibid.,  Vol.  2,  p.  317. 


42  RECENT  COLONIZATION  IN  CHILE 

of  Boers  mostly  spoke  Italian — ten  were  really  Boers,  the  rest 
were  Uitlanders  who  had  been  working  on  the  Boer  railroads. 
It  is  quite  clear  from  all  this  that  there  are  abundant  Chileans 
to  take  up  and  clear  any  new  lands  to  which  the  government 
will  let  them  have  access. 

In  1898  Congress  approved  a  law  empowering  the  President 
to  grant  lands  to  Chileans,  150  hectares  to  a  family,  with  20 
more  for  each  child  of  12  or  more  years,  if  the  head  of  the  family 
could  read  and  write,  and  had  not  been  convicted  of  crime,  "with 
the  same  rights  and  obligations  as  for  foreign  colonists."  This 
entitled  Chileans  to  transportation,  house,  tools,  seed,  and 
monthly  allowance  for  the  first  year,  with  the  obligation  to  fence, 
build,  and  cultivate.  Had  this  law  been  put  into  eflfect,  it  would 
have  had  the  result  of  quickly  clearing  all  of  Chile's  vacant  lands 
and  bringing  them  under  cultivation  by  native-born  Chileans. 
It  was  received  with  eagerness.  Five  thousand  Chilean  families 
applied  for  land  under  it,  many  tr>'ing  to  get  title  to  the  land 
they  were  occupying  at  the  time;  but  not  one  of  these  applications 
was  granted.  The  Inspector  General  declared  the  thing  was  not 
practicable  and  suspended  the  application  of  the  law.  "There 
was  no  inhabitant  of  the  south  who  did  not  think  he  was  author- 
ized to  demand  a  lot  as  a  colonist,"  says  the  Inspector  General, 
adding  that  "he  hadn't  the  500,000  hectares  of  land  he  should 
need."  ^  As  a  matter  of  fact  when  Chileans  colonize  they  can 
do  with  much  less  than  100  hectares.  The  government  had 
complained  that  four  or  five  Chilean  families  would  come  in  on 
one  lot. 

Concessions,  Auctions,  and  Evictions 

Now  begin  to  appear  the  concessions  to  colonize.  Hitherto, 
land  has  been  granted  on  easy  terms  to  foreigners  and,  in  rare 
cases,  to  natives  who  would  begin  its  cultivation.  Now,  so 
much  land  is  granted  to  a  contractor  for  every  colonist  that  he 
will  settle  on  it.  The  government  pays  the  expense  of  bringing 
the  settlers,  as  before,  and  the  contractor  is  rewarded  by  the 
difference  between  the  amount  of  land  he  receives  from  the  gov- 

3*  Palacios,  Vol.  2,  p.  311. 


THE  ITALIAN  COLONY  43 

ernment  and  that  which  he  hands  over  to  the  settlers.  Nueva 
Italia  is  a  good  instance.  There  are  a  good  many  Italians  in 
Chile  who  are  engaged  almost  exclusively  in  trade  and  as  skilled 
workmen.  For  agriculture  and  other  unskilled  labor  the  pay  was 
too  small  to  attract  them,  and  there  were  plenty  of  Chileans  avail- 
able. The  Italians  were,  consequently,  mostly  in  the  cities  of  the 
north.  But  there  was  founded  in  1904  a  purely  Italian  colony 
west  of  Traiguen,  about  35  miles  northwest  of  Temuco.  The 
village  was  named  Capitan  Pastene  after  an  Italian  famous  in  the 
period  of  the  Independence.  The  concession  was  27,000  hectares 
for  100  families,  although  at  first  only  30  were  to  come.  Ac- 
counts vary;  but  apparently  parcels  of  land  up  to  166  hectares 
were  assigned  to  each  family  by  lot.  After  the  whole  number  of 
families  had  arrived,  the  contractor  would  have  benefited  to  the 
extent  of  10,400  hectares,  gratuitously  acquired,  and  the  expense  I 
of  his  journeys  to  Europe  with  his  wife  in  fulfilling  the  con-  [ 
tract.^^  As  usual,  the  police  evicted  the  Chileans  already  on  the 
ground.  But  the  time  had  gone  by  when  such  evictions  passed 
without  echo  in  the  depths  of  Chilean  forests.  There  were  work- 
men's organizations  in  the  cities,  and  there  were  liberal  news- 
papers that  were  eager  for  sensations,  and  much  was  made  of  the 
injustice  to  Chilean  citizens.  In  some  cases  disturbances  arose 
that  were  menacing  for  Italians.  The  newspapers  of  the  south 
assert  that  150  Chilean  families  had  to  be  evicted  to  make  room 
for  the  30  Italian  families.  Newspaper  publicity  on  these  pro- 
cedures must  eventually  bring  them  to  an  end.  The  Italians  of 
Santiago  have  their  own  paper,  which  is  frankly  contemptuous 
of  the  Chilean,  laborer.  "This  country,  like  other  South  American 
nations,  can  only  be  raised  to  prosperity  by  foreign  colonization 
.  .  .  Italian  especially,  so  that  these  disturbances  and  threats 
hurt  Chile  rather  than  us."  The  law  of  these  concessions  is  that 
of  1874.  It  granted  150  hectares  of  level  land,  or  300  of  hilly 
land,  to  anyone  who  would  bring  one  colonist  family  from  Europe 
or  the  United  States,  with  an  additional  75  hectares  for  each 
child  over  10  years  old,  and  37>^  more  for  a  child  between  4  and 

"  Palacios,  Vol.  2,  p.  359. 


44  RECENT  COLONIZATION  IN  CHILE 

10,  the  transportation  being  at  government  expense.  The  profit 
to  the  concessionary,  as  in  the  case  of  Nueva  Italia,  was  that 
much  smaller  lots  than  this  were  actually  handed  over  to  the 
colonists.  This  was  not  in  the  law  of  1874  but  appears  to  be  an 
"executive  interpretation"  of  it.  The  only  gain  to  the  country 
was  in  enlisting  the  selfish  zeal  of  the  concessionary  to  collect 
colonists,  which  the  Paris  Agency  was  not  getting  in  satisfactory 
quantity  or  quality. 

The  selling  of  land  at  auction  had  begun  in  1873,  when  some 
of  the  land  won  from  the  Araucanians  on  the  Frontera  was  sur- 
veyed and  subdivided  into  lots  of  from  200  to  700  hectares  and 
put  up  at  auction.  There  were  sold  in  this  way  46,000  hectares 
at  an  average  of  eight  dollars  a  hectare.  The  interest  of  the 
Treasury  in  this  transaction  was  that  it  got  cash,  and  no  cash 
had  come  to  it  from  any  of  the  other  methods  of  settling  the 
land.  But  of  course  the  auction  sales  involved  speculation,  with 
the  result  that  in  Chile,  as  elsewhere,  much  land  was  kept  out 
of  use.  Some  buyers  never  paid  their  first  quota,  some  cultivated 
their  own  land  and  government  land  alongside,  to  which  they 
had  no  title.  Incomplete  payments  became  very  common,  so 
that  by  1900  there  were  $5,500,000  overdue  the  state.  In  1903 
Congress  was  supplied  by  the  Treasury  Department  with  a  list 
of  these  debtors,  which  was  in  part  reproduced  in  the  Santiago 
newspapers.  It  contained  the  names  of  members  of  both  Houses 
and  of  judges  of  the  courts  as  delinquent  in  payments  for  these 
land  purchases,  showing  that  the  privileged  classes  were  getting 
hold  of  the  land  without  satisfying  their  legal  obligations.  There 
were  some  great  names  in  this  list  as  not  having  paid  even  the 
first  quota  on  their  purchase,  yet  the  same  names  figure  again 
in  subsequent  auctions.  Of  60  odd  persons  whose  names  were 
published  in  the  newspapers,  9  protested  that  they  owed  nothing 
to  the  government  but  gave  no  documents  in  support  of  their 
assertion.  One  of  these  protestants  was  the  General  Inspector 
of  Lands  and  Colonization.  There  was  a  considerable  outcry 
from  the  public,  which  is  making  itself  heard  more  and  more 
in  Chile.      It  did  not,   however,   prevent  a  law  being   passed 


THE  POWER  OF  "INFLUENCE"  45 

that  remitted  a  great  portion  of  these  debts.  To  give  better 
color  to  the  transaction,  the  half  million  dollars  still  owing  by 
real  colonists,  Germans  and  others  in  the  south,  are  referred  to 
very  prominently  in  the  text  of  the  law.  It  will  be  noticed  that 
the  debts  thus  remaining  had  been  running  for  30  years.  Up  to 
1900  there  had  been  20  of  these  auctions,  disposing  of  over  a 
million  hectares — 4,000  square  miles — of  land  in  the  Frontera. 
The  same  method  of  disposal  was  applied  to  other  districts. 
Always  there  has  been  more  or  less  protest,  but  the  procedures 
have  been  very  profitable  to  a  class  of  speculators. 

Since  the  year  1900  simple  decrees  of  the  president  have 
granted  concessions  of  unsurveyed  lands  by  extreme  limits  to 
John  Doe  or  his  representatives.  One  was  to  occupy  "the  lands 
of  the  nation  in  the  hydrographic  basin  of  the  rivers  Cocham6  and 
Manso  from  the  sea  to  the  boundary  of  the  Argentine  Repub- 
lic." ^^  Very  moderate  obligations  were  imposed,  such  as  es- 
tablishing sawmills,  sheep  runs,  and  some  cultivation  of  the  land. 
Also,  "to  give  work  in  their  industrial  establishments  to  the 
colonists  who  may  come  with  government  contracts,"  which,  of 
course,  excludes  the  Chilean  settlers  on  the  spot,  who  are  driven 
off  by  the  Chilean  police.  Very  commonly  the  Chileans  on  the 
ground  are  squatters  without  rights;  but  even  when  able  or  will- 
ing to  buy  or  rent  they  are  given  no  chance,  as  when  the  Baker 
concession  to  the  distinguished  Santiagueno,  Julio  Vicuna  Suber- 
caseaux,  was  "later  made  over  by  this  concessionary  to  the 
Argentine  Cattle  Companies  of  Lake  Posadas,"  with  the  certainty 
that  "to  deliver  the  soil  of  the  nation  to  foreign  exploitation  there 
will  be  expelled  from  it  the  Chileans  who  are  occupying  it  and 
have  occupied  it  for  many  years,  and  they  did  not  rent  and  did 
not  buy  because  they  were  never  notified  that  it  was  going  to  be 
put  up  at  auction."  ^^  In  1903  cessions  of  huge  territories  were 
made  not  at  the  rate  of  the  basic  law  of  1870,  150  cuadras  for 
each  head  of  family,  but  "for  so  many  families,"  40  in  one  case 
for  a  concession  80  miles  north  and  south  across  the  whole  width 

'8  Palacios,  Vol.  2,  p.  276. 

'^  La  Alianza  Liberal,  Puerto  Montt,  May  i,  1918. 


46  RECENT  COLONIZATION  IN  CHILE 

of  Chile  on  the  47th  parallel;  and  these  families  need  only  to  be 
introduced  "two  a  year,"  at  the  expense  of  the  government,  of 
course!  Thus  what  was  originally  a  law  for  the  settlement  of 
empty  Chilean  lands  has  been  made  an  agency  for  gigantic 
speculations  that  take  away  from  the  Chilean  people  all  chance 
of  getting  land  and  that  bring  huge  quantities  of  it  into  posses- 
sion of  persons  of  great  wealth,  with  no  equivalent  payment  of 
value.  Of  course  the  real  cause  underlying  the  eviction  of  the 
Chileans  from  their  grounds  was  greed — the  desire  for  the  un- 
earned increment  of  land  value  which  is  very  powerful  every- 
.  where.  That  Chileans  were  evicted  to  put  Germans  or  Italians 
in  their  places  only  means  that  the  instigators  of  the  eviction 
thought  the  foreigners  would  give  value  to  the  land  more  quickly. 

\i  The  Case  of  IJltima  Esperanza 

Probably  the  most  remarkable  evictions  in  all  this  history 
are  those  in  the  Ultima  Esperanza  country  of  Magellanes  in  1906, 
when  the  Germans  and  other  foreigners  who  had  discovered  the 
value  of  the  region,  who  had  squatted  on  it  in  1891  with  permits 
from  the  Chilean  representative  at  Punta  Arenas,  and  had  ac- 
tually won  it  for  Chile  by  occupying  it,  were  turned  out  by  an 
auction  sale  that  disposed  of  nearly  400,000  hectares  in  a  lump. 
The  service  that  they  had  rendered  is  plainly  stated  by 
Colonel  Holdich. 

Up  to  1843  Patagonia  as  far  as  the  Strait  of  Magellan  was  a  no- 
man's  land.  In  that  year  Chile  sent  the  frigate  Ancud  to  take 
possession  of  the  Strait,  not  because  she  saw  the  value  of  Pata- 
gonian  lands,  but  because  the  Strait  was  the  main  entrance 
to  the  Chilean  Pacific.  A  fort  was  built  at  Port  Famine  a  little 
south  of  Punta  Arenas,  to  which  the  post  was  soon  transferred. 
The  grasses  of  the  country  are  extraordinary  for  fattening  sheep, 
but  this  was  not  discovered  until  1877.  In  1885  the  sheep  in 
Magellanes  province  numbered  40,000.  In  1891  they  had  in- 
creased to  500,000  and  in  1916  to  2,000,000.  In  1891  Captain 
Hermann  Eberhard,  who  had  sailed  those  waters  many  years, 
went  by  boat  with  some  other  Germans  and  the  Australian  Kark 


THE  CASE  OF  ULTIMA  ESPERANZA 


47 


to  tJItima  Esperanza  Inlet,  about  130  miles  northwest  from  Punta 
Arenas,  and  settled  there  under  a  license  obtained  from  the 
Chilean  representative  at  Punta  Arenas.  They  succeeded  at 
sheep  farming  immediately,   and  other  Germans  joined   them 


200MlL£S 


Fig.  14 — Ultima  Esperanza  region.  The  Strait  of  Magellan  has  been  Chilean 
since  1843.  Further  north  the  boundary  was  not  fixed  until  the  "King's  Award"  in 
1902.  The  black  area  on  Ultima  Esperanza  (last  hope)  Inlet  was  adjudged  to  Chile 
because  the  squatters  there  so  desired.  The  Chilean  government  caused  an  auction 
sale  of  their  lands  to  a  sheep-raising  company  which  ousted  the  settlers. 


under  temporary  licenses  from  Chilean  authorities.  By  1906 
they  numbered  600  and  were  very  prosperous.*'  They  had  built 
wharves,  hotels,  roads  to  Gallegos  and  Punta  Arenas  and  had 
established  steamboat  connections  with  the  German  Trans- 
atlantic lines. 

When  the  Argentine  Republic  awakened  to  the  value  of  Pata- 
gonia and  the  whole  matter  of  the  boundary  with  Chile  came  into 

*o  Deutsche  Arbeit,  Vol.  2,  p.  96. 


48  RECENT  COLONIZATION  IN  CHILE 

dispute,  the  question  was  referred  to  King  Edward  VII  for  arbi- 
tration. In  1902  a  commission  from  the  King,  under  Sir  Thomas 
Holdich,  went  to  Ultima  Esperanza  Inlet  to  examine  the  ground. 
Holdich  found  the  Germans  in  occupation,  and  the  Award  recog- 
nized the  rights  of  these  settlers  and  made  the  district  Chilean, 
"All  this  country  of  tjltima  Esperanza  has  been  occupied  by  enter- 
prising colonists,  who  have  partitioned  the  land  between  them 
without  waiting  to  know  to  which  republic  it  might  eventually 
belong.  They  have  done  great  things  in  order  to  improve  their 
holdings,  and  it  was  with  especial  reference  to  their  locally 
recognized  limits  of  occupation  that  the  Award  was  made  in 
those  few  parts  of  the  line  where  no  natural  feature  was  available 
to  furnish  a  practical  boundar>'."  *^ 

When  the  Chilean  government  announced  that  the  whole 
region  was  to  be  put  up  at  auction  without  making  any  reserva- 
tion of  the  lands  of  the  men  who  had  won  it  for  Chile  under 
temporary  licenses  to  settle,  there  was  consternation  among 
them.  But  they  postponed  trouble  by  getting  Rudolf  Stuben- 
rauch,  the  German  consul,  who  had  been  one  of  the  original 
settlers,  to  bid  up  the  price.  The  sale  was  held  in  March,  1905. 
Under  Stubenrauch's  management  the  price  went  up  from  $5 
a  hectare  to  $50  and  even  $135,  so  that  the  purchasers  on  think- 
ing it  over  forfeited  their  deposits  rather  than  make  payment 
at  such  a  price.  There  appear  to  have  been  four  companies  with 
several  millions  of  capital  each  that  had  been  formed  for  the 
purpose  of  bidding  in  these  lands.  But  another  auction,  held 
rather  suddenly  in  September,  caught  the  resourceful  consul 
away  in  Europe,  and  351,000  hectares  of  land  were  sold  to  the 
Exploration  Company  of  Tierra  del  Fuego  at  ^12.25  a  hectare. 
Eberhard  and  Kark  were  allowed,  as  a  special  consideration, 
to  purchase  their  holdings,  which  were  withheld  from  the  sale; 
and  a  concession  was  granted  gratuitously  to  the  family  of 
the  Chilean  governor  at  Punta  Arenas,  who  had  given  out  the 
temporary  licenses  by  which  the  land  had  come  to  be  part  of^ 
Chile  and  been  reprimanded  for  it  by  his  superiors!   Most  of  the 

"  Holdich,  p.  222. 


CHILE  NOT  COLONIZATION  COUNTRY  49 

settlers  had  to  leave,  driven  out  by  the  government  they  had 
served  too  well,  which  treated  them  exactly  as  it  had  been 
in  the  habit  of  treating  the  working-class  Chileans. 

Chile  Not  a  Colonization  Country 

The  handbooks  say  that  immigration  into  Chile  is  small  and 
is  aided  by  the  government.  If  immigration  were  not  so  aided, 
there  would  be  none  at  all.  Creole  Chile  has  plenty  of  workers 
for  its  good  land,  as  is  proved  by  the  low  rate  of  wages  and  the 
low  standard  of  life  of  the  workers  there.  In  the  deserts  of  the 
north  the  exploitation  of  nitrate  and  to  a  less  extent  of  mineral 
ores — copper — alone  calls  for  hands,  and  they  are  secured  without 
difficulty.  Agriculture  is  only  possible  there  on  a  few  square 
miles  of  surface,  and  it  must  always  be  so.  Equally  hopeless  are 
the  mist- wrapped,  rain-swept  forests  of  the  southern  archi- 
pelagoes. Almost  two-thirds  of  the  national  domain  is  utterly 
hopeless;  Chilean,  but  never  to  sustain  Chilean  life.  It  is  by 
counting  it  Chile  that  we  reckon  13  Chileans  to  a  square  mile. 
Thousands  of  square  miles  will  support  no  one.  Ordinary  farm- 
ing ought  to  support  over  100  to  the  square  mile.  Temperate 
South  America  all  looks  attractive  from  that  point  of  view,  but 
it  matters  a  good  deal  how  many  hopeless  deserts  and  swamps 
are  included  in  a  country's  area.  The  Annuaire  International 
estimates  that  89  per  cent  of  Uruguay  is  productive,  74  per  cent 
of  the  Argentine  Republic,  8  per  cent  of  Chile.  At  a  guess  I  should 
say  25  or  30  per  cent  of  Brazil  is  productive.  That  puts  the  ques- 
tion of  population  density  in  another  light.  If  the,  estimates  are 
accurate,  and  I  think  they  are  within  reasonable  limits,  then  the 
real  densities  are  quite  other  than  the  statistical  densities.  Sta- 
tistically, in  1920,  the  Argentine  had  8,  Brazil  6,  Uruguay  17,  and 
Chile  13  persons  to  the  square  mile;  really  the  Argentine  had  .11, 
Brazil  20  (?),  Uruguay  19,  and  Chile  160.  A  country  is  not  made 
of  rocks  and  desert  expanses  but  of  human  beings  and  their 
homes.  A  nation  is  a  group  of  people  under  a  government  ac- 
cepted by  them.' A  country  is  a  group  of  people  with  the  land  they 
draw  their  life  from.    The  fair  plains  of  France  were  there  ten 


50  RECENT  COLONIZATION  IN  CHILE 

thousand  years  ago,  although  then  clothed  with  thick  woods. 
But  France  did  not  yet  exist.  The  French  nation  was  not  there. 
The  best  picture  of  a  country  the  geographer  has  today  is  the  map 
showing  the  size  and  location  of  that  country's  cities.  For  civil- 
ized men  inevitably  create  towns  and  cities.  The  city  diagram  for 
Chile  (Fig.  15)  shows  the  concentration  of  life  into  Creole  Chile 
in  the  central  territory.  And  the  reader  must  recall  on  studying 
such  a  chart  that  the  rural  population  is  mostly  contained  in 
the  interstices  between  the  towns,  not  on  one  side  of  them. 
It  is  not  towns  alone  that  are  absent  in  the  eastern  third  or  more 
of  Chile's  narrow  strip  occupied  by  the  wilderness  of  Andean 
slopes  and  ridges,  but  men  as  well.  The  best  traveled  route  from 
the  Argentine  Republic  to  Chile  had  three  long  and  solitary  days 
of  mule  travel  in  former  times.  Even  now  it  is  a  long  solitary  day 
by  train  between  the  two  countries.  The  cities  map  makes  this 
clear.  The  cities  outline  Chile.  It  has  all  the  inhabitants  it  can 
feed  unless  they  take  up  manufacturing  or  fairly  intensive  agri- 
culture. Chile  has  little  manufacturing  at  present.  Its  agricul- 
ture, on  the  other  hand,  is  far  more  intensive  than  in  most 
American  countries,  in  spite  of  the  winter  rains  which  are  re- 
garded in  Chile  as  a  handicap.  Of  course  they  compel  irrigation 
for  summer  growth,  but  Chilean  yields  are  high  in  all  crops. 
Taking  data  from  the  Annuaire  International  de  Statistique  Agri- 
cole  for  1915-1916,  Chile's  leading  crops  by  acreage  were  in  1913 

Table  I — Chile's  Le.\ding  Crops  in  1913 

CROP  HECTARES 

Wheat 412,000 

Grapes 66,000 

Barley 62,000 

Oats      49,000 

Potatoes 33.000 

Corn 24.000 

as  given  in  Table  I.  No  comparative  yields  are  given  for  grapes, 
but  for  the  others  the  Annuaire  gives  results  for  the  mean  of  the 
years  1907-1916  as  in  Table  II,  except  that  for  potatoes  I  have 
used  the  mean  for  the  years  1912-1916,  since  the  potato  yield 


HIGH  YIELDS  OF  CHILEAN  FARMS 


51 


reported  for  the  Argentine  Republic  in  1907,  1908,  1909,  250 
quintals  per  hectare,  is  absurd.  Even  Belgium  has  not  exceeded 
211  quintals. 

Table  II — Comp.a.rative  Yields  in  Metric  Quintals  Per  Hectare 


CROP 

CHILE 

argentine 

URUGUAY 

united  states 

FRANCE 

Wheat 

12.6 

6.4 

5-6 

9.9 

13-4 

Barley 

18.4 

8.1 

5-7 

134 

13-7 

Oats 

14.4 

8.4 

7-1 

10.7 

12.9 

Potatoes 

83- 

71.8 

64.1 

88.4 

Corn 

15.2 

13- 

6.4 

16.3 

12.3 

Average  cereal 

I5-I 

9- 

6.2 

12.6 

I3-I 

The  yield  of  wheat,  which  is  Chile's  principal  crop,  is  much 
greater  than  that  of  its  great  wheat  neighbor,  the  Argentine 
Republic,  in  every  one  of  the  years  cited  as  well  as  in  the  mean  of 
all  of  them.  Though  the  Argentine  Republic  produces  eight  times 
as  much  wheat  as  Chile,  it  takes  nearly  sixteen  times  as  much 
land  to  do  it  on.  It  is  doubtless  due  to  the  scarcity  of  land  and  the 
cheapness  of  labor  that  agriculture  in  Chile  is  taking  on  an  inten- 
sive form,  as  evidenced  by  these  large  yields. 

Table  III  shows  the  futility  of  spending  government  money 
to  encourage  immigration  into  Chile. 

Table  III — Comparative  Productive  Areas  and  Population 
Densities 


PERCENTAGE  OV 

POPULATION  DENSITY 

COUNTRY 

PRODUCTIVE 

PER  PRODUCTIVE 

AREA 

SQUARE  MILE 

France 

94;^ 

204 

United  Kingdom 

84 

463 

Canada* 

3K 

49 

United  States*, 

46 

62 

Argentine  Republic 

74 

II 

Chile 

8 

149 

*  If  we  use  I3>2'and  60  per  cent  respectively  for  the  productive  areas  of 
Canada  and  the  United  States,  as  I  should  prefer,  we  should  get  densities  19 
and  48,  still  more  indicative  of  the  need  of  immigration  and  the  room  for  it. 


52  RECENT  COLONIZATION  IN  CHILE 

The  United  Kingdom  is  eminenlly  a  country'  of  emigration, 
France  is  less  so.  In  the  table  the  Argentine  appears  best  adapted 
to  receive  immigrants,  Canada  comes  next,  and  then  the  United 
States.  But  Chile  is  not  in  the  immigration  class  at  all.  The 
Chileans  are  sprung  of  a  splendid  stock  of  American  Indians, 
with  a  tincture  of  Spanish  blood  and  a  garment  of  Spanish 
culture.  With  nothing  of  the  Frenchman's  inheritance  of  thrift 
or  his  knowledge  of  agriculture,  they  have  almost  as  small  a 
share  of  the  earth  at  their  disposition,  even  if  it  were  as  available 
to  them  as  is  the  soil  of  France  to  her  peasants. 

To  say  that  Chile  is  the  most  Creole  of  American  countries  is  to 
call  its  governing  class  a  landed  aristocracy,  its  peasants  land- 
less. There  is  little  likelihood  of  early  change  in  this  condition. 
Effective  immigration  is  impracticable.  There  is  no  room  for  it. 
Industrial  education  would  increase  the  well-being  of  all  the 
people;  but  that  calls  for  the  co-operation  of  the  ruling  class,  who 
are  not  sensible  of  the  needs  of  the  masses.  The  awakening  of  the 
ruling  class  would  be  the  finest  development  of  Creole  life. 


^ 


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UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 

Los  Angeles 
THls  book  fs^pUEon  the  last  date  stamped  below. 


MfiTd   1966 


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ID.URL    i^OV 


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70 


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Form  L9-Series  4-4  4 


REC'D  LO-URI. 

.APR  12 19721 
'  ^'^'- m  3 11971. 


APR 


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E  OCT  07^ 


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^0 


JAN  2 1 1992 

Rf CO  LOURB 

DEC  08  1991 


PAMPHLET  BINDER 

.    Syrocuse,  N.   Y. 
;;;;3;   Stockton,  Colit. 


3  1158  01021   1307 


HD 

1516 

C5J3 


M.  • 


